


The New Real

by Gia279



Series: Strange Young World [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Laura, BAMF Stiles, Extreme Weather, Good Peter, Gore, Grief, Hale fire, M/M, Magical Apocalypse, Nuclear Apocalypse, Post Apocalyptic AU, Survival, Violence, Witch!Stiles, almost forgot that one, apocalypse au, characters presumed dead, little bit of creature horror i suppose, magically mutated animals, more to be added - Freeform, mutated Peter, mutations, weird time line, you know who you are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:21:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 68,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23659054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gia279/pseuds/Gia279
Summary: This is some Sleeping Beauty bullshit.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Strange Young World [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1703503
Comments: 251
Kudos: 504
Collections: Apocalyptist Literature





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS SINCE LAST YEAR technically. I wrote it before i took my reading break, then started the second one, and am now onto another reading break. There will be 4 parts of this series, I'm super fucking excited to share it, and it has nothing to do with current events but there is an apocalypse and it's about surviving. Hopefully this is entertaining! Yeeeeeee. The series itself will have a HAPPY ENDING if anyone is worried about that. I'm a die hard happy ending writer, but the characters have to earn it, hahahah. 
> 
> Posting once a week, because the chapters are long like I used to write them, or they will be after the first two, anyway, see you next Tuesday, hope you enjoy this! <3

Stiles’s eyes snapped open as the spell deteriorated around him, leaving him feeling cold and exposed. His vision was wonky, but he made out two people hovering over him, two blobs against a lighter backdrop. “Okay,” he croaked. “Who kissed me?”

One of the blobs made a disgusted noise and shoved away from them. 

A woman leaned over Stiles, close enough that he could make out her face. “We thought you two were dead. What _was_ that?”

“Safety spell.” Stiles sat up with a grunt, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead. “Who are you? Why are you in our house?”

Beside him, John sat up, grumbling and rubbing his face. He looked rumpled, his uniform more disheveled than Stiles had ever seen it.

Stiles’s head started to clear, followed by his vision. The woman next to him was probably in her thirties, maybe younger, and wearing ragged jeans and a shirt that may have once been white. Memory stirred and Stiles looked around, jaw dropping as he noticed the wreckage. They were in what was once the living room, but the ceiling and most of the walls were broken, the floor was buckled and waterlogged, parts of the house were caved in, and there were leaves and branches scattered everywhere. “Wait,” he said slowly, “so…” He remembered what was happening before he’d done his spell and looked at John, panicked.

John grasped his shoulder. “I’m fine.” His voice was as scratchy and broken as Stiles’s. 

“What _happened?_ ” Stiles looked up at the woman. “The nukes, the witches…who survived?”

She looked startled and then sad, her mouth twisting down in a soft frown of sympathy. “It—it’s-”

The man who’d walked away bolted back in, scrambling over a pile of wood. “We gotta go. One got in.”

Stiles looked up, frowning, and saw…a deer, a doe, picking her way delicately through the pile of rubble where the kitchen once was. He snorted. “It’s just a deer,” he said, but the two were backing away, the looks on their faces making him tense automatically. They looked frightened. 

“We need to run,” the woman said quietly. “Come on.” She held a hand out, beckoning to them.

“There’s a herd on its way,” the man next to her hissed. 

“Of what? Deer? They’re probably just not scared of people anymore.” Stiles looked at the doe, but she didn’t seem rabid. He got up, stretching his cramped legs and helping John to his feet. 

“Please,” the woman whispered, “we’ll explain later, but we have to _go._ ”

The man tugged on her arm. “Leave them, Laura.” They began backing away again, gazes flicking around.

Stiles rolled his eyes and took a step toward the deer, intending to scare her away. 

The doe flicked her ears and lowered her head, opening her mouth. 

The man swore. 

Fire seemed to roll from the doe’s mouth like a liquid, pouring a blazing path across the rubble.

“Holy shit!” Stiles fell backwards, stumbling over his own feet and tripping on some broken floor boards.

John grabbed his arm and hauled him toward the two that’d woken them.

“Follow us!” the woman ordered, and ran.

Stiles and John kept pace behind them. He barely saw anything as they ran, broken houses and ruined vehicles blurred into an unimportant landscape while his mind raced. 

When he’d done the spell, he’d known the nukes would have done some fucked up shit to everything, but fire breathing deer? How did that make sense? But, he realized, it hadn’t just been nukes, had it? God, his head was fuzzy. So much had happened so quickly, he’d only had one goal: keep his dad alive. The other witches could do what they wanted, but Stiles had known their plan would fail.

The two led them into the preserve, a place Stiles had been staring at and playing in since he was a child, however—the path was right, but nothing else was. The trees looked strange and wrong, the grass shades different from the usual dark green, almost purple. Stiles twisted his head, looking for any signs of familiarity, but…nothing. Even the tree branches were spiny and black and bizarre.

“Come on, who knows what smelled that fire,” the woman muttered. 

The man led them into a boarded up, crumbling husk of a house, passed the broken pieces and through a heavy, hidden door. The tunnel it led into was pitch black even before they closed the door.

Stiles figured these two had probably seen worse and circled his thumb and index finger, creating a quarter sized beam of light that illuminated rough dirt walls and the uneven ground.

The woman caught Stiles’s shoulder, making him tense. She stared into his face like she was searching for something, her eyes gleaming animal-like in the dim light. “You’re a witch?”

He lifted his chin. “Yes.”

“We should keep moving,” the man growled. 

She let him go and caught up to him, glancing back every few feet at Stiles. 

The tunnel was closed in and stale, and aside from their breathing and quick footsteps, utterly silent. Stiles felt like he had cotton stuffed in his ears and tried to fixate on the sound of John’s harsh breathing. “See, I told you that you needed to be doing cardio,” he muttered.

John swatted at him. “Because of the nuclear apocalypse and fire-breathing deer?”

“For _any_ emergency.” 

John laughed quietly.

The tunnel opened up into a smallish room; two filthy backpacks rested against the far wall, on either side of an opening for another door, next to two unrolled sleeping bags and a lantern. The woman let out a breath and turned to them. 

Stiles crossed his arms. “Time to tell us what’s going on.”

She nodded. “Okay, but you should keep him hidden for now.” She gestured at John.

“Why?”

“He’s the first human we’ve seen in ten years.”

Sparks jumped to Stiles’s fingers. “ _Human?_ ” That implied that these two weren’t, which he should have guessed, but his magic felt weird and drained. He braced, then felt his heart jump-thud with panic in his chest. “Wait, _ten years?_ ” His head spun—ten years, ten _years,_ a decade, an entire decade? That couldn’t possibly be true, could it? He pressed a hand to his head. “I don’t understand.”

John looked equally shocked and pale, but silent, watching the woman. 

“Yeah, I guess that’s…a lot. Have you…I guess you had to have been in that…cocoon thing…since the end?”

Stiles tugged on his hair and started to pace. “They were going to launch nukes and everyone else was going to retaliate, and it was going to kill everyone. The witches…”

She nodded for him to go on, her expression sympathetic.

He frowned, trying to remember. “All of us got a message, every witch I knew. They were going to try to stop them with magic.” He inhaled slowly. “They wanted every active witch to pool their power to try and stop it, but that—I was sure that wouldn’t work, so I just—I protected my dad and myself.”

The man had retreated to the far wall, gathering the backpacks and sleeping bags into a pile next to his foot like he was afraid they’d try to steal them. He snorted, his expression twisted into disgust.

“Shut up,” the woman muttered, then looked at Stiles. “The magic and nukes collided and killed all-” She glanced at John— “ _most_ humans.”

Stiles began to pace again. All humans. 

“It mutated stuff,” she went on, “the animals, the plants. It changed the atmosphere, made the climate completely unpredictable, the weather.”

“Sit down,” the man snapped.

Stiles whipped around to glare at him. “ _Screw_ you, I just found out everyone I know is dead, _and_ that I’m thirty! That I would be thirty.” He looked at his hands. He knew the spell had technically frozen him and John in time, but what did that even mean? Just that it was ten years past his last birthday, that he was born thirty-one years ago technically, even if he’d only been aging for twenty-one of them. 

“Be quiet,” the woman ordered. “Derek, take it easy. You…we get it’s hard, but…”

Stiles rubbed his face. “Okay, what else?”

She grimaced and looked away, exposing some scars on her neck. “Well, with the weather so unpredictable, growing crops is all but impossible, and most things growing on their own aren’t edible. Nature…hasn’t fixed itself yet. At least…not here.” She glanced at Derek and the two shared a look, mingled hope and desperation.

“What? What do you mean ‘not here’? Somewhere else is better?” Stiles demanded. 

Derek glowered at him, crossing his arms, and the woman said nothing. 

John looked between them. He’d stayed quiet through it all, observing, as he did best, and looked closed off but pleasant, at least on the surface. “It’s probably rough out there,” he said lightly. “We should probably thank these two for their help and get going.”

Fury boiled up in Stiles’s gut, his mouth dropping open to protest—they had no supplies and no idea what was out there, everyone else had had a decade to learn the terrain—but John shot him a quelling look. 

“Laura,” Derek growled in a warning tone.

She swallowed. “We’re not bad people,” she croaked.

John smiled. “Of course not.”

“It’s just that I’ve got Derek to look after—he’s my brother, my only family.”

John said, kindly, “Family first.”

She nodded, dropping her gaze like she was ashamed. 

Stiles bared his teeth, fuming as John ushered him out the door that Derek had been guarding just moments ago, one that apparently led directly outside. He spun around before the door shut behind them, catching Laura’s eyes and glaring into them as hard as he could. He wanted her to know that she was essentially killing them. 

She pressed her lips together and closed the door. 

Stiles turned his glare on the dirt path unfurled directly in front of them, cutting neatly through the preserve. “What is _wrong_ with you? And them,” he hissed.

“They aren’t bad people,” John said quietly. “They’re just trying to survive.”

Stiles shoved his hands through his hair, guilt and fear and fury churning in his gut. “We are going to _die,_ ” he said, because whether they were bad people or not, that was a fact. “We have no idea what’s out there, no supplies, and no shelter. They should’ve just fucking left us.” He pressed his palms into his eyes. “We would’ve still been frozen but that’s better than brutally killed or roasted alive by a fucking deer.”

John started walking, apparently done with Stiles’s totally justified freak out.

Stiles scrambled after him. “Where are you going?”

“As you pointed out, we have no supplies. Better get to looking for some, right?”

“Dad…”

He glanced at Stiles, brows raised. He looked tired, and he was still in his sheriff’s uniform, down to his utility belt. There hadn’t been time to change into anything else when the world was going to shit, so they were both in just…what they’d been wearing for the past ten years, apparently.

Stiles looked at his jeans and sneakers, the t-shirt with a Catwoman logo on it, and sort of wished he’d thrown on some tough boots, or maybe a hoodie. At least he was wearing shoes. Stiles sighed. He just couldn’t point out to John that ten years probably meant even the hardiest of canned goods were spoiled or picked clean. “Alright,” he sighed. “Lead the way.” It wasn’t like they had a better option anyway.  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad you're interested! I appreciate your comments, I just usually don't know what to say in response so I just ;-; Here's chapter 2, hope you have as much fun reading as I did writing! :D

Stiles couldn’t believe how…broken Beacon Hills was. There weren’t any intact buildings, something was burning in the distance, and there were creatures _everywhere_. Stiles couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there, watching them. He felt distinctly hunted, and it wasn’t a good sensation. He and John unanimously decided to cut through the preserve—which weirdly felt safer—to get out of town faster. If what Laura and Derek had said was true, whatever was watching them wasn’t human and was probably dangerous.

“Where are we going?” Stiles asked after a few quiet minutes. It seemed like John had a destination in mind, the way he was walking like a man on a mission, but Stiles couldn’t fathom any place that would still have supplies after ten years. 

“Some place I know,” he replied vaguely. He was flushed with exertion, which was worrying Stiles a little—they’d survived nuclear bombs, John was _not_ going to have a heart attack now—but he wasn’t breathing very hard or struggling, and it _was_ kind of hot.

Stiles looked more closely at the trees as they walked. Some looked normal-ish, with the usual brown bark, branches, and leaves, but others looked scaly, like overgrown reptiles, and others almost looked like bones, with drooping, trailing branches and amber colored leaves. He stepped closer to John, unsettled.

The ground shuddered with a distant thump, followed by a pained wail.

“Stay back,” Stiles commanded as he took off running.

John muttered, “Yeah, right,” and followed him, but it had been a while since he could outrun Stiles. 

The sound was coming from the road, well out of the trees. Stiles ran up the muddy incline, scrambling up onto the cracked asphalt.

A woman was in the road, clutching her bleeding abdomen and facing a…beaver, the size of a Labrador, with a gleaming silvery coat and a spiked tail. It had blood in its overgrown teeth. The woman glanced back at Stiles, her eyes wheeling with panic. She was a witch, her eyes flashing brilliant green as their gazes locked. 

Stiles caught her when her knees gave out. “Can you run?”

She shook her head, shoving weakly at him. “Go.”

The beaver let out a rasping growl and slapped its tail against the road, shaking the ground.

She let out a sob. “Let go, I’m—I’m already dead.” She shoved at his chest, this time with something hard. 

Stiles caught the little journal automatically. It was beat up and bulging with pages, weighty with magic, but only a bit bigger than his hand. 

“Go,” she ordered in a stronger voice. She spun and threw her hands out, black waves of magic striking the beaver one right after another and barely slowing it down.

Stiles shoved the book into his back pocket and raised his hands, hurling a crackling ball of energy at the creature, but it simply shuddered and shook it off. “We can make it if we run,” he said, reaching for her arm. 

The beaver, with a sudden burst of speed Stiles hadn’t thought it possessed, lunged, big teeth bared and sharp. 

The witch shoved Stiles away with magic, and screamed as the beaver’s teeth latched deeply into her shoulder. 

The spell tossed Stiles right over the edge of the road, down the muddy hill. He threw himself back at it, fighting against gravity and the slick, slippery mud. His shoes were caked with it, heavy and awkward, and by the time he made it back up, the witch had stopped screaming.

The creature was dragging her body off the road and into the trees on the opposite side. 

Stiles let his hands fall to his sides, breathing heavily as he stared at the blood and cracks in the road. He shuddered and turned away, clenching his jaw. Just another person he couldn’t save, he guessed. She wasn’t the first. He swallowed thickly, eyes stinging, but he pushed away the memories, the thoughts. He’d have time to grieve later. For now…

John cursed as he stumbled up the incline, sliding in the mud until Stiles ran to help pull him up. “What happened?”

“You’re getting slow, old man,” Stiles managed, looking back at the blood spattered on the road. “I tried to help her, but-” He flexed his hands. “I didn’t have enough magic, I guess.”

John looked at him, then squeezed his shoulder. “I’m guessing that safety spell took a lot out of you. I feel pretty drained, I bet you do, too.”

Stiles nodded, but he didn’t want to believe it. His magic was offensive; it had never failed him like this before, and he didn’t know what to do with himself if he couldn’t protect them. “Um, we should get moving. The…thing that killed her might come back.” 

John nodded. “This way.” He started walking in the opposite direction of the beaver, which was a relief. “What was it?”

“Uh…just…something big.” He wasn’t entirely sure how to describe it to him in a way that sounded believable and not cartoonish, so he decided not to. He was certain that wouldn’t be the only thing they encountered that had been created in the aftermath. 

John led them to a half-destroyed old bar, which looked like it’d been in pretty bad disrepair even before the bombs. 

“Dad? Seriously? A bar?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said mildly. “I know what I’m doing. Reggie Clancy owned this bar. You remember Reggie.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Always in trouble for not getting permits for his little projects.” John tried the door despite the gaping hole in the wall four feet to his right. “He happened to let me in on his little projects a few times, mostly so I could help him get the proper permits.” He shoved the door open, breaking a pile of planks and barstools that’d been holding it closed.

Stiles followed him inside, looking at the debris skeptically. “We’re gonna get tetanus,” he muttered, eyeing a spike of rusty metal sticking out of the floor. 

“Just don’t step on anything.”

“Great advice, Dad, thanks,” he grumbled. His sleeve caught on a buckled support beam, distracting him long enough that when he looked up, John was out of sight. His breath caught in his throat, chest constricting. “Dad?” The bar wasn’t that big, the only rooms he couldn’t see were the bathrooms and storage. 

“Behind the bar!” His voice was badly muffled, barely audible. 

Stiles picked his way over the mess, climbed over a tipped table, and tripped behind the bar. The shelves were picked clean of any liquor, bar snacks, and bottled water. Stiles imagined the storage room looked much the same. 

“Where are you?” He didn’t see a door to a cellar or basement, just the mangled wooden floor and the shelving. 

“Look under the shelves,” John called.

Stiles blinked, tilting his head, and there it was, a barely noticeable hinge to a door just big enough for Reggie Clancy’s considerable size, if Stiles was remembering right. He shuddered, but it wouldn’t be a tight squeeze. Even with his magic depleted, he could just blast a hole in the ceiling or wall to get out if they got stuck. He took a steadying breath, nodded to himself, and climbed down into the opening. 

There was a step ladder right under that he nearly missed, legs dangling and kicking in a panicked free fall before he found it and climbed down.

“Smooth,” John quipped from about five feet away, hands on his hips.

“You could’ve told me there was a ladder.” He looked around the dank, cement cellar. It was pitch dark with bare bulbs swinging from the ceiling that most likely wouldn’t work and shelves lining the wall.

“I was a bit busy. Mind getting some light going?” He pulled his Maglite from his tool belt and directed it at the shelves.

Stiles flicked his fingers at the light bulbs, sending light to the whole room, illuminating all the shelves, and there were plenty. 

Some of the canned foods were pretty bad, bulging or even leaking in some cases, but there were also packs of dried white rice, pasta, beans—kidney and pinto—and even dried fruit. There were a couple of cans of green beans that looked okay, and boxes of Hostess products that, frankly, looked fine aside from the dust covering the outer box.

“Amazing.”

“Always knew the Twinkies would make it.” Stiles snagged a box. 

“Hang on, we’re going to have to pick what’s most important to come with us,” John pointed out. 

“I’m aware, but I was hoping we could just take everything edible.” 

“Using what?”

Stiles winced. “Yeah, okay. So Reggie had a doomsday cellar, don’t you think he had backpacks anywhere?”

John shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe not.” He looked around and sighed. “He seemed more like the stock up and burrow type, don’t you think?”

“I guess.” Stiles set the box back on the shelf. “I’m gonna look for some bags or something.” He half-hoped there were beds and showers, maybe even toilets, so they could just stay here a while. He’d seen plenty of disaster and apocalypse movies, and he wasn’t sure he was cut out for hard survival, wasn’t sure if they’d make it far, especially if his magic wasn’t as effective against these creatures. Speaking of…

He pulled the book out of his back pocket, running his fingers over the beat up cover, the sagging spine, then carefully flipped it open.

_Jana Peterson, Book of Shadows_ was written in gleaming gold ink—magic infused to last, obviously, just like the whole book was. 

The next few pages had spells and potions, all carefully written out in color-coded ink, but—

“Fuck,” Stiles muttered. “This is all garden magic!”

“And?” John called.

“And I’ve never managed to _do_ garden magic before? What am I gonna do with this?” He looked up, annoyed and feeling useless. He’d wandered behind the first row of shelves and found an opening in the wall; it just led to another room of shelves, these ones filled with more dented canned goods, a couple first aid kits, liquor, rope bundles, and— “Ha!”

“What?”

Stiles grabbed the two backpacks off the shelf nearest him. They were embroidered with _Reggie_ and _Lindsey_ , which made Stiles kind of sad; Reggie had been ready and willing to tough it out, but he hadn’t even had a chance to try.

Stiles sighed quietly and checked the bags, but they were thankfully empty of rats and spiders. He grabbed one of the first aid kits and stuck it in the backpack marked _Lindsey._ The rope looked frayed, almost like it’d been chewed on, so he left it and the liquor and went back around the corner. “Found some backpacks and a first aid kit.”

“Good, let’s load them up with these dried foods. Found some jerky and MREs. Not as many as I expected, but Reggie has more than one of these things, so he probably spread his supplies out.” John beckoned him closer, then set his hands on his hips, studying the shelves. “It seems like we’ll be able to take quite a bit, since this is all dried stuff and it’s lightweight. I haven’t found any water, that damn fool, but he’s got purification kits—iodine mostly, which’ll work.”

Stiles set the bags at his feet and started divvying up everything John handed him, pausing briefly to examine some of the dehydrated food. He didn't see any mold, and hoped that it wasn’t going to make them horrifically ill. They were all vacuum sealed, but those things could still go bad, so they’d be doing smell checks before eating anything. He wished he could just look up how long these things typically stayed edible, but the internet was long gone. 

“Damn shame all the canned goods are spoiled,” John sighed, tossing a pack of dry noodles into the bags.

“Yeah, but at least this stuff is lighter. Cans would weigh us down a lot.” Stiles grabbed a box of Twinkies for his own bag, shrugging when John just stared at him. “What? They’re filling.”

“Uh-huh.”

Stiles fixed the bag, rearranging things so he could see how much space he had. “Sucks about the water, though. We won’t get far without some.” He swallowed, nerves making his throat dry.

“We’ll find some, we just have to be careful and smart.” John lifted an undented can to inspect it, then yelped and backpedaled hastily from the shelf.

Stiles looked up and jumped away; he had the presence of mind to grab the bags before the flood of scorpions could land in them. 

“Jesus,” John muttered, watching them and flexing his hand like he was trying to shake off the feeling. He backed up to the wall, glancing automatically toward the ladder. 

Stiles tossed the bags at him and flexed his hands. Fire crackled in his palms.

The scorpions were the size of rats, with three tails all arched to strike and bright green patterns on their backs.

Stiles tossed the fire at them, then dashed a line in front of him and John, stopping their advance. He wasn’t expecting much besides slowing them down enough to get to the ladder, so when the first one popped, spattering greenish goo everywhere, he flinched. The rest followed like slushy, gross popcorn kernels.

“I wonder how many more of those are down here.”

Stiles glanced back at him. “You okay?”

He was pale, sweat beaded on his temples, eyes almost glassy, but he nodded when he noticed Stiles looking at him. “I’m fine, just…shocked.” He leaned over the fire to look at the last one still holding on, flames half engulfing its body. “Since when do scorpions have three tails?”

“Since when do they look big enough to drag off a Chihuahua if they wanted?”

John snorted, then grunted in disgust when the last one finally popped, leaving a wet, gooey smear all over the floor and a horrific smell lingering in the air. 

Stiles held out a hand to kill the flames. “Let’s get out before more come to avenge their deaths.” He saw John’s worried expression and tensed. “What? More?” He looked around, hands flexing.

“No, I just…” He shook his head. “Come on, grab your bag, we’ll find some water and somewhere to hole up before it gets dark.”

A chill ran down his spine at the idea of it getting dark outside, of the things that might emerge under the cover of night. “Yeah, we better get to it,” he squeaked. He scooped up his bag and zipped it, then slung it over his shoulders. 

John went up the ladder first, with Stiles only a few steps behind him, worried about being separated. He pulled himself up with a grunt, then, after kicking some broken tiles out of his way, reached down for Stiles.

“I got it.” He clambered out awkwardly, his feet tangling in pieces of plaster and splintered beams. “Ugh, I bet every building is going to look like this, fuck.” He kicked at another piece of ceiling tile and cursed. Something gray and slimy had been under it, something that looked distinctly like a bone. He shuddered and looked away, ignoring his churning stomach.

“We’ll just head north some, see if any of those winter cabins are usable-”

Something crawled through the hole in the west wall, throwing bricks and pieces of the wall out of its way with huge, hand-like paws. It was furry and seemed too large to be real, too big for the tiny broken down bar, vaguely canine-shaped with spikes along its back that looked like shards of its spine sticking out. Enormous, uneven fangs stuck out of its gray, wrinkled muzzle.

“What the…”

“Step back,” Stiles commanded, meeting its red flashing eyes. 

The werewolf bared its teeth, a long, skinny tongue coming out to lick over his muzzle, swiping up the swinging strings of saliva on its jaws. 

“I don’t know if this happened because of the nukes, but surely you don’t want to hurt anybody,” Stiles said calmly. He put his hands up, edging toward John. “If this is your den, we’re on our way out.” He felt John at his shoulder and pushed back so he would start moving, hoping he wouldn’t run.

The werewolf snarled and lunged, misshapen claws outstretched.

Stiles arched his arm to hurl a fireball.

“ _No!_ ” Someone collided with his side, throwing him and John to the floor.

The werewolf sailed over their heads, crashing into and destroying the last remaining wall. He snarled and shook himself, sending shrapnel flying, before he turned back to them, his long, thin tail lashing the air threateningly.

“That’s our uncle!” a voice gasped against Stiles’s ear.

The werewolf lunged again; Stiles threw his hands up, freezing him mid-jump. 

Stiles dropped his head back into the bricks and closed his eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wee, one of the longer chapters finally! I hope you like this one, and I'm so glad you guys seem interested so far! I honestly just loveee creating mutant monsters hahaha. <3 Thank you for your comments

He only had a few seconds to catch his breath before someone yanked him unceremoniously to his feet. He pulled out of her grasp, brushing wood splinters and dust from his clothes. The back of his left arm was scraped open and bleeding sluggishly. “Thanks.”

Laura looked contrite. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t let you kill him. That’s our Uncle Peter.” She looked at the werewolf frozen mid-air. “Or he was our uncle.” 

Stiles helped John to his feet and spotted Derek, looking at the ground by Stiles’s feet. He followed his gaze and inhaled sharply, snatching up the Book of Shadows from where it’d fallen out of his pocket, then shot Laura a dark look. “Yeah, well, he almost killed us. Why does he look like that?”

Laura shook her head, tugging anxiously at her short hair. “He was already…the nukes twisted something that was already kind of gone,” she murmured, turning away. She cleared her throat and flicked a hand at him. “Um, that’s why we were in your house, actually. He was chasing a deer, and we were tracking him, stumbled into your place and saw the magic…thing.”

“Uh-huh.” Stiles glanced back at John. “And you came after us to save your uncle from us?”

“We followed you here,” Laura admitted with a guilty twist to her mouth. “It took a while, because we were arguing, but…” She wrapped the torn hem of her shirt between her fingers. “But I think we should stick together. We can all watch out for each other. We—we can hunt meat for you guys and you…” Her gaze flicked almost imperceptibly toward the Book of Shadows in Stiles’s hand. “You could grow produce for us.” 

The proverbial lightbulb clicked on. Stiles was a witch. The only way to grow anything now was with garden magic to regulate soil and weather and coax plants to grow. They'd followed John and Stiles…probably for long enough to see him receive the book from Jana Peterson. They wanted a witchy farmer of their own.

The only problem with their plan was that Stiles’s magic was mainly offensive; it couldn’t grow things, only obliterate them. But they didn’t have to know that. 

“You sent us away before,” he said to test the waters. 

Laura nodded, her face falling. “I couldn’t live with myself like that, though, coldly turning away two people who had no idea what was out here. It won’t happen again, I promise.” 

Stiles didn’t trust people as a rule; they were selfish, petty beings and trusting just led to being crushed under the weight of betrayal. 

Laura’s gaze flicked down again, like she couldn’t help it, like she was drawn to the little spell book that ten years ago probably wouldn’t have pinged on anyone’s radar, let alone a couple of werewolves. 

Stiles pulled his backpack around and casually put the book away while he spoke. “It’s not like it’s instantaneous,” he said. “If we had somewhere permanent, I could grow stuff, but it would take time and space.” He felt John staring at him but refused to look at him; he knew Stiles was lying, but Stiles hoped that he wouldn’t call him on it. 

Laura nodded. “I know, but we’re heading somewhere safe. Somewhere we _could_ set up permanently.”

“Laura,” Derek growled. 

Stiles looked over at him as he zipped his bag closed over the book. 

Derek was barely inside, standing in one of the ragged holes in the wall with his arms crossed, boots balanced precariously on the loose bricks. His expression was harsh and disapproving, thick brows drawn down in a deep V.

“What, Derek?” Laura demanded. “We’re taking them with us anyway.”

Derek glowered at her, then turned his head, redirecting his sour expression at his uncle. 

“So what’s the plan, exactly?” John asked, setting a hand on Stiles’s shoulder as if to warn him to be quiet. “Just following your uncle around?”

Derek growled quietly.

Stiles flexed his hands and met his gaze, flames dancing between his fingers; when Derek bared his teeth, he grinned.

Laura shook her head. “Let’s go outside, there’s a nest of scorpions stirring under the debris and their stings cause hallucinations.”

“Among other things,” Derek muttered, turning and jumping down from his perch and into the coarse dirt outside. 

“He got stung a couple years ago,” Laura whispered, shuddering. She looked at her uncle with clenched fists. “Will he…is he gonna be able to move if you go outside?”

“Only if I break the spell, which I don’t plan to do.” He looked into Peter’s eyes as he walked past him, though, and felt a jolt, a spark of human intelligence buried under the mutations. Hmm. He followed behind John reluctantly, running through spells in his head. 

Laura stood halfway in front of Derek facing John, hands open at her sides, expression soft. “Full disclosure: Derek doesn’t want you here.”

“I’m stunned,” Stiles said dryly.

John rubbed his forehead. “Alright.”

“But I still think we can all help each other, and regardless of whether you have magic, I just couldn’t live with sending you guys away.” She took a breath. “And I’m the alpha, so my vote counts twice.”

“Does not,” Derek muttered. 

Stiles held up a hand. “How’re you the alpha?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Laura sighed sadly. “He killed another alpha at some point, which has made it even harder to keep tabs on him, by the way.” She rolled her shoulders back. “I became the alpha after our mother died.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” John said evenly.

Stiles went rigid. _Don’t think about it._ Everyone was dead. No humans, which meant none of the people he had known. Everyone who’d known him as a kid, who’d known Claudia, was dead. He swallowed back the wave of grief. _Later, later._

“Up until three years ago,” Laura was saying when he started listening again, “everything in the far north was covered in ice. There are some…rumors that the ice melted, and the earth underneath is healthy, the weather is stable…livable. There aren’t many people left,” she said, “and we want to move away from them so we can just…live.”

Stiles lifted a brow, but John beat him to it.

“Where did you hear those rumors?” he asked in a casual voice.

She frowned. “From people who’ve been there—fey, nymphs, vampires.”

“Why did they leave?” Stiles blurted, ignoring the sharp look John shot him.

“What do you mean?” Laura asked cautiously. 

Behind her, Derek had to turn his head, hiding a laugh against his shoulder, confusing Stiles. 

“I just mean, if it’s so great there, why would they leave to tell people about it?”

She looked annoyed and doubtful, then lifted her chin. “They couldn’t survive there alone, so they couldn’t make it, and no one trusts each other anymore.” She shot Derek a dark glare. “But I think we can do it.”

“Why has it taken you so long?” John shifted his weight, crossing his arms loosely. 

“We’ve been trying to go for a year, since we first heard about it, but we didn’t want to leave Peter. We’ve been corralling him north for months.”

Stiles tsked and turned on his heel, climbing through the nearest hole in the wall. He heard John telling them to let him go, but he didn’t hear their responses, walking over to stand about four inches from Peter’s snarling muzzle. “You’re better than this,” he said, and snapped his fingers, draining more of his already-depleted magic. 

The man who tumbled out of the mutated werewolf shape was lighter haired than Laura or Derek, filthy, scarred, and naked.

Stiles tilted his head. “Oh, you’re Peter _Hale._ My dad arrested you for drunk and disorderly once.” He winced, looking automatically toward where he’d left everyone else.

That made them Laura and Derek Hale, whose family had died a year before the bombs. They apparently couldn’t catch a break either.

“Come on,” Stiles said to Peter. “I’m sure they’ll get you some clothes.”

Peter stared up at him for a long, tense moment, before standing and following him outside silently. They had to climb over the crumpled front door and Stiles nearly face-planted into the dirt before they reached the others, who were still talking all the way up until they caught sight of the naked man standing just behind Stiles’s shoulder. Silence buzzed as Derek and Laura stared at Peter uncomprehendingly, their eyes skimming over him and then Stiles as if they weren’t sure whether it was a trick. 

Peter stepped out from behind Stiles, moving slowly, holding his hands out at his sides as if he was worried they might think he was going to attack them. 

Laura let out a strangled noise and grabbed him up in a fierce hug; Peter went limp and leaned into her, shutting his eyes and laying his head on her shoulder. 

Derek looked conflicted until Peter looked at him expectantly, and then he joined them. 

John bumped his shoulder to Stiles’s. “Could you do that to the other animals?” he murmured.

Stiles shook his head. “Peter was still in there, I just had to…tug him out, so to speak.”

Laura spun around. “Wait, does that mean if he shifts, he’ll go back?”

Stiles grimaced. “He might still look like that, yeah, but he shouldn’t get stuck or lose control again.”

“We’ll take it,” she said, hugging Peter again. 

Stiles turned toward John, letting the Hales have their reunion as privately as possible.

“What do you think?” 

He shrugged. “I think Laura’s right, and we need each other.” He’d just have to learn garden magic, that was all. It couldn’t be too hard, he could create fire balls and lightning, damn it, he could make some vegetables grow. Besides, he had plenty of time, since they would have to walk, he was pretty sure. 

Laura sniffled and let go of Peter. “Let’s get you some clothes, then we can get on our way.”

“I’m guessing we can’t just hijack a car?” Stiles asked, just to make sure.

“No!” Laura glanced at Derek. “Try not to touch vehicles if you can help it. Most of the ones in Beacon Hills have already been set off, but you never know.”

“Wait, set off?”

“They explode,” John guessed. “Right?”

Laura nodded. “If they get bumped or rocked, most vehicles go off like bombs. The amount of time it takes varies, but if you do bump one, haul ass.”

Stiles rubbed his face. “Awesome.”

She put her hands on her hips. “We’ll need to travel as much as we can during daylight hours, and get Peter some clothes.”

“There’s a donation box near the edge of town that might not have been raided,” Derek muttered. 

Stiles lifted a brow. “Hey, look, he spoke more than two words at once.”

“Fuck off.”

He snapped his fingers. “Damn, so close to speaking like a person.”

Derek bared his teeth, making Laura sigh noisily.

“Can you not? Let’s go before it starts snowing or something.”

“Snowing?” Stiles sputtered. “It’s almost ninety!”

“I told you the weather is unpredictable.” 

He looked up at the sky, clear, cloudless blue beyond the blazing sun. “If you say so.” He gestured at her to lead the way, which she did. Stiles fell in step beside John, behind Derek and Laura. He glanced back to see if Peter was coming with them and yelped out a muffled curse. 

Peter was indeed following them, no more than four inches behind Stiles with a blank look on his face.

“Don’t you think you’d be better off by your niece and nephew?” John asked loudly. “I’m _sure_ they missed you and would love to catch up.”

Peter merely glanced at him, then Laura and Derek, then locked his gaze back on Stiles. 

John slid an uneasy glance his way. “You sure you cured him?”

Stiles bristled. “Yes, he’s fine, he just doesn’t want to talk.” Or he couldn’t for reasons magic couldn’t fix. But- “He’s perfectly werewolf again, anyway.”

Derek looked back at them. “Keep up.”

Stiles sincerely considered setting his clothes on fire, just for a second. He was a werewolf, he’d be fine.

John continued to be suspicious of Peter the whole walk back to Beacon Hills, Derek continued to be rude, and Laura walked with single-minded determination.

The donation box was one of those big metal drop box types that had giant padlocks on the doors. Laura grabbed the lock in one hand and twisted sharply; with an unholy shriek, it snapped and she tossed it aside to pry the door open.

There were tons of shoes—some in pretty good condition, others falling apart—and a single hiking boot, mixed in with the clothes. Derek and Laura picked through it first, their hands quick and adept at picking past things that were too small or damaged to do any good. Laura plucked out a neon green pair of ski pants and a purple shirt and held them out to Peter, straight faced.  
He curled his lip in disgust.

She grinned, wide and dazzling, and knocked her elbow into his side. “Knew you were in there.”

He rolled his eyes and pointedly turned away until she set the ski pants aside.

Stiles looked up at the sky again. If it _did_ snow, he and John wouldn’t be able to weather the cold as easily as the werewolves, which meant socks, gloves, coats—they would need to protect their extremities. His mouth twisted, trying to imagine shivering and huddling for warmth after a day of pouring sweat under a relentless sun.

Something thick and stifling flew against his head, blinding him and knocking him back a step.

He whipped it off, cursing, and found himself holding a thick, deep green coat. He looked up, glaring.

“It’ll fit,” Derek grunted, turning back to the pile of clothes.

Stiles shook the jacket and held it up in front of himself, annoyed to see that it looked like Derek was right.

John tugged at his backpack. “Try it on or you won’t know for sure until it’s too late.”

Stiles rolled his eyes and handed his bag over. “I swear, it’s like going shopping before school all over again.” He tugged the jacket on, zipped it, and immediately felt like he was suffocating. Annoyed, he stuck his hands in the pockets and found a leather glove in each, along with a melted tube of lip balm in the left and a receipt for Sprite and a pack of Reese’s Cups in the right. Huh. Kindred spirit. He folded the receipt back and tossed the lip balm aside. “What?” he demanded when John glared at him. “Everyone’s dead.”

“We aren’t.” He pointedly picked up the tube and tossed it in with the discarded clothes.

Stiles busied himself taking the jacket off and putting it in his bag, trying to hide the fact that he was ashamed. It wasn’t that he didn’t care; he just couldn’t see anyone surviving long enough that _littering_ would matter anymore. He looked at Derek and Laura automatically. They’d lasted a decade. They were werewolves, of course, naturally more resilient than others, but it was still ten years. That had to count for something. 

“Here, Sheriff, this should fit,” Laura said suddenly, passing John a blue winter jacket.

“You can call me John,” he said, making her smile.

Stiles put his bag back over his shoulders, elbow bumping into Peter’s ribs, which made him sigh. “You gotta back up.” He stepped away, giving Peter a long, stern look.

Peter went to Laura and elbowed her aside, picking his own clothes.

She beamed.

“We need to go to the Sheriff’s Department,” John announced once they’d all found something.

“All weapons and ammunition has been destroyed or looted already,” Laura said. “Sorry.”

He shook his head. “Not for weapons.” He started walking without waiting for a reply, leaving the rest to either follow or get left behind.

“What’s your name?” Laura asked as they trailed behind him.

“Stiles,” he told her, amused that he hadn’t already. “Sorry, guess I was too distracted to introduce myself.”

“Understandable, and it isn’t like we introduced ourselves either.”

“Yeah,” he said slowly, “but I know who you are.”

She didn’t look surprised. “That safety spell…that was pretty heavy duty magic, right?” She glanced at him sideways. 

Stiles kept facing forward. “Yep.”

“I’m guessing the magic you used to bring Peter back wasn’t exactly a parlor trick either.”

“Nope.”

She just nodded and lengthened her stride, catching up to John; he could just hear her voice, pitched with optimism, as she started talking to him.

Stiles shook his head and glanced over his shoulder. 

Derek and Peter were a few yards behind with their heads bent together; Derek noticed Stiles watching and narrowed his eyes. 

Stiles scoffed and turned back around. Like he cared what they were talking about.

The Sheriff’s Department was in as bad shape as everything else, the ceiling collapsed in on itself, the glass all blown out and glittering on the pitted sidewalk. 

John picked his way around the biggest shards and pulled at the door; it collapsed off the hinges, splintering in his hand. 

“What are we looking for?” Laura asked anxiously. “We should really try to make some headway before dark.”

“We will.” John walked inside.

Stiles stepped around Laura to follow him, making a light with his fingers again. “What _are_ we looking for?” He tripped over a piece of a desk, throwing his hands out to catch himself. 

“Watch your step,” John said mildly. “I’m getting some of the uniform boots we have. Your sneakers aren’t going to last long and they need better shoes for their uncle if we’re going to be walking.” John didn’t seem to have much trouble navigating the rubble, apparently feeling confident now that he was somewhere even remotely familiar. 

Stiles followed his path and tried not to impale himself on exposed pipes, holding his light up high to act as a guide.

There were indeed boots and uniforms left in the supply room, which had been left alone most likely due to their inability to feed or kill anyone. 

Stiles switched his ratty sneakers for the heavy duty police boots right there, hopping on one foot to keep from stepping on shards of broken tile while he laced up the boots. There were even unopened packs of socks wedged behind a pile of uniform shirts, both of which they grabbed and shoved in their bags. 

Laura looked bemused when they returned with armfuls of heavy black boots, but Peter figured it out quickly and grabbed a pair in his size. 

Stiles tossed him some socks to go with them, then looked at Derek. “Pretty sure yours have holes in them, dude.”

“Don’t call me dude,” he growled. He took the boots Stiles offered though, which counted as a win.

Laura switched hers, too. “Thanks, that was a good idea.” She stamped her feet, testing the fit. “They’re gonna be a bitch to break in though, aren’t they?” 

“Yep.” John lined the remaining pairs against the wall of the department. “Just in case anyone else needs some,” he explained simply.

Laura and Derek stared at him, while Stiles dropped his gaze. It was good, he decided, that John was the way he was. He would remind all of them that there was no point in surviving if they forgot how to be a society.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 I hope you're all enjoying still, thank you for your comments. :D

They didn’t make it far from Beacon Hills before night fell. Laura seemed irritated and impatient, but she didn’t push it; she simply told them they should find somewhere to settle for the night. 

“Can we camp?” John asked doubtfully. 

“We’ll have to, but where we set up is the concern.” Laura put her hands on her hips and looked around. “Trees?”

Derek shrugged. “Probably better than out in the open.” 

Stiles looked at the cluster of trees to the right of where they’d been walking, the spiny black poisonous looking things they’d been avoiding their whole walk, and thought they were just as likely to die in there as anywhere else. He sighed and followed them in.

“We’re going to hunt,” Laura announced. “Why don’t you guys make camp while we find food?” She ignored the wild way Derek looked at her and set her bag against a tree. 

Derek clearly didn’t want to part with his own bag, which obviously held everything he owned, glaring over at Stiles and John as he set it with hers. 

Stiles scoffed. “Should we build a fire?” It was still pretty warm out, but it was even darker in the cover of the trees, and the idea of a source of light was comforting.

Laura’s gaze moved up the trunks of the trees. “Sure, just…don’t let anything sneak up on you.” She grabbed Derek’s shoulder and forcefully turned him around. “We’ll try to find some water!” she called as they walked away. 

Peter watched them go with his usual blank expression, though he seemed upset if the way he was leaning forward, tense and almost thrumming with emotion, was any indication. 

“You could go with them,” Stiles suggested. 

Peter relaxed and shook his head. 

Stiles sighed. “Should we try to find some firewood?”

“Probably wise. I’ll hold down the fort.”

Stiles set his bag down by John and started gathering. Thankfully, he didn’t have to walk too far to find dry sticks and branches scattered everywhere. 

Peter surprised him by helping, bringing piles of dry, spindly wood to the center of their camp.

Stiles found heavy rocks to form a barrier around the base, then studied the pile of sticks, mystified. He wasn’t exactly the camping type, especially since it wasn’t really something he could do with Scott. The twig he’d been holding snapped as his fist clenched, grief washing over him like a tidal wave. He pushed it back until it felt like he could move without his bones crumbling to dust under the pain. “Um,” he croaked, “do either of you, uh, know how to set these-?”

Peter crouched beside him and started rearranging the wood, his hands quick and sure.

“Thanks.” Stiles flinched when John knelt on his other side and put an arm over his shoulders. “I’m fine.”

The three of them were silent after Stiles set fire to the pile Peter had made, staring into the flames. 

Stiles let out a breath, muscles going lax, and let it come. Everything flooded him at once, memories and emotions and even physical sensations he’d managed to ignore throughout the day. He dug his fingers into the dirt and rode it out, tears coming to his eyes and trailing down his cheeks unchecked. He was exhausted, and thirsty, starving, his arm was throbbing where Laura had accidentally cut it, and everyone he loved except John was gone. _Everyone I knew._ He thought of Scott, Melissa, Lydia, Danny…everyone, wiped out, obliterated, erased from the world while he’d been cocooned safely in his magic. He should have tried harder, should have protected them. He clenched his eyes shut, biting back a sob. He should have done more. He remembered everything—it felt like hours ago to him, except it wasn’t, it was ten long years, and it was too little, too late. 

The witches everywhere, all over the world, were trying and failing to stop the bombs, trying to save everyone, and Stiles had known, had felt it in his very soul, that adding his magic to the collective as he’d been asked to wouldn’t help. He’d tried convincing the other witches nearest him to pool their magic with his to protect the entire town, but they’d insisted—“We can save everyone if we add our magic to the collective.”—and Stiles had had a choice: protect himself and John or try and almost definitely fail to save everyone. He’d chosen his father and even that spell had almost been too much for him. It’d done what it was supposed to, preserving them in a safe moment of time until some living person who meant them no harm had touched the shield. 

He dropped his chin to his chest and wished—but his friends were horrifically, fragilely human, and were gone. He just hoped it’d been quick for them, painless. 

Laura and Derek returned minutes later with what looked like a sheep, except its wool was a rusty red-orange that Stiles had never seen before. “We found water, too,” Laura announced, holding up a jug.

“Awesome.” Stiles hastily wiped his face, ignoring the way Derek was frowning at him, and stood. “What do we do with that?”

Laura looked at the sheep. “We’ll deal with it.”

“Oh…great.” Stiles looked over at John. “Um. We—we have iodine for the water?”

“Perfect! You can work on that,” Laura said cheerfully, passing the jug over while Derek set the sheep on the ground and flicked his claws out.

_Oh god._ “’Kay,” Stiles managed, strangled. He turned to kneel beside his bag, keeping his back to the noise of…whatever Derek was doing to the sheep. 

Did it count as a slaughter if the animal was already dead? Didn’t they have to drain the blood before they could cook it? Oh, god, they were going to drain the blood here, a few feet away from where Stiles was, where he was expected to _sleep._ Was there a spell for that? Was there a way for him to vanish the blood before he ever had to see it? His stomach rolled. They had probably been eating the meat raw before this, so would they know they had to drain the blood? 

Something thumped behind him, followed by a steady plunking sound.

“Should be about ten to fifteen minutes,” Laura said brightly.

Stiles turned cautiously, saw the headless, wool-less hunk of meat swinging gently from a tree branch, and spun around. “ _Ugh._ ” 

Derek snorted and Stiles couldn’t help turning to glare at him, which was good, because he was gripping the discarded wool and sort of looked like a clown who’d taken his wig off.

Stiles smirked and got back to purifying the water. 

While the meat cooked—damn it, it smelled good despite the gore show—the group passed around the water jug and John shared a package of dehydrated mangoes, which Stiles did not approve of.

Laura took a bite and let out a long, happy sigh. “It’s been _forever_ since we’ve had fruit. This is so good, thank you.” 

“Well, watching out for each other means sharing our rations,” John said lightly. 

Laura smiled, her eyes gleaming suspiciously in the firelight. “Thank you.”

“How do you guys not have scurvy?” Stiles blurted. 

“Werewolves don’t get that, moron,” Derek snapped. 

Laura elbowed him. “Quit it.” She looked at Stiles with an apologetic smile. “We can live on mostly meat if we have to, even though we’re omnivores. Sucks, though, I definitely miss fruit and vegetables. And chocolate,” she added with a grin.

“And coffee?” Stiles guessed. 

She _and_ Derek groaned piteously. “Yes. So much.”

Stiles smirked to himself and nodded, picking at his mango slice. He was past the point of hungry and into the shaky, queasy area, so he was going slow, which was giving him time to think.

They needed a better plan than just “head north and hope it’s habitable”. He and John couldn’t survive on just meat, and with so many dangerous, unrecognizable creatures out there, who knew how long they’d make it. He glanced at Derek and felt his mouth tighten when he noticed him staring back. They _could_ help each other, so if Stiles was going to have to learn garden magic to keep himself and John alive, it might be in their best interest to do so with the aid of a few werewolves who could fight and hunt. They could provide meat and some protection, Stiles the produce and, if they were attacked, some fire power. Of course, there was always the possibility that he couldn’t learn garden magic, couldn’t make things grow, and Derek and Laura would most likely leave them to fend for themselves, searching for another witch who _could_ do garden magic, which would end badly for them. 

So he needed to learn quickly. 

While they were eating the freshly cooked meat, it started to snow. At first, Stiles thought it was ash, considering the air was still hot around them, but then a flake landed on his arm and melted while he watched. A breeze blew through their makeshift camp, sending the flames dancing. “What the…?” Stiles looked up, but he couldn’t even really see the sky, just the twisted branches of the trees. 

Snow fell faster, sent the fire hissing and smoking, sputtering dangerously. 

Stiles flung a shield over it, annoyed. “What’s happening?”

“I told you the weather is unpredictable,” Laura said, tossing a jacket to Peter. 

Stiles yanked his coat out and pulled it on, glowering at the snow gathering around them. “This is impossible.” He ran his fingers through it, rubbing it between his palms until it melted, and still couldn’t quite believe it.

“You’ll get used to it.” Laura curled her knees up, resting her arms across them. “I suggest we take turns keeping watch. I don’t hear anything dangerous nearby, but some stuff is pretty sneaky.” She brushed snow out of her hair, watching its slow fall to the dirt next to her. “I’ll take the first watch.”

Derek muttered something that made her scoff and knock her shoulder into his.

“Just go to bed,” she ordered. “I’ve got it.”

Stiles glanced at John, mouth twisting. They didn’t have sleeping bags or blankets, so it was looking like a long, uncomfortable night for them. Their next order of business would be scavenging things to sleep on or with.

Peter laid on his side near the fire, staring into the flames and curling a fist under his cheek. It took Derek about six seconds to give up and drag his sleeping bag over to lay next to him.

John sighed and fluffed his backpack, arranging the hard and soft contents, then stretched out on his side of the fire, using the bag as a pillow.

Stiles shook his head; the ground was cold and wet, there was no way he would be getting any sleep tonight. He took his bag and retreated to the closest tree with no blood near it and leaned against it, backpack wrapped up in his arms. He didn’t think he’d sleep much, but he knew he needed some rest; he would need the energy while they were traveling. He pulled the gloves out of his jacket pockets and put them on, holding his hands under his arms to keep them warm. 

Later, before Laura could wake Derek up for a turn taking watch, Stiles waved her off. “I got it,” he whispered. “I can’t sleep anyway.”

She nodded and bit her lip, her eyes darting around anxiously. “We’ll get you guys some sleeping bags or something soon.” 

“Sure.” He crawled closer to the fire, holding his gloved hands out in an effort to warm them. His limbs felt stiff with the cold, toes like icicles in his boots. He had extra socks, he could layer them, but then he would have to take _off_ his boots, exposing his feet to the cold, before he could get that second layer on. He wasn’t desperate enough for that yet, he decided. 

He looked over at John worriedly, but he seemed fine, arms crossed over his chest, face lax with sleep. He’d gotten a lot of practice sleeping where he could during his first year as sheriff, Stiles remembered, catching quick naps between extra shifts. The ground here probably smelled less like vomit than the floor of his office had. 

Stiles cast his senses out like a net, feeling John’s peaceful energy, Laura’s restless sleep, Derek’s tension that he carried with him even while unconscious. There was something small and afraid nearby, but it wouldn’t approach, not with fear thrumming through it like poison. Stiles pulled his bag around in front of him, resting it between his knees, and dug out the Book of Shadows to start reading.

The first few entries were potions and balms, written like recipes. Stiles knew some of them, which was a good sign; maybe Jana’s spells wouldn’t be out of reach for him if they had similar magic styles and tastes. 

The first spell was to simply warm the air around the caster, like an introduction to weather magic. Stiles had only ever scorched things before in his attempts with things like that, or brought down lightning and storms, but if he was going to be a witchy, post-apocalyptic farmer, he should probably start somewhere. 

He breathed evenly, timing his inhales with the instructions in the book. Most spells were basically descriptions of how other witches felt when they performed the spell, sensations, emotions, thoughts; magic was imprecise and specific to each individual, but with practice, one witch could teach themselves to mimic the spell another had created, until they learned the spell well enough to do it without a thought. 

Peter was watching him. He hadn’t moved or made a sound, but he was very clearly observing Stiles fail to warm the air. 

Stiles didn’t look up from the book. “I know you’re back to your normal self. Pretending isn’t going to do you any favors.” 

Peter just turned his gaze to the fire.

Stiles couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t the only one pretending, after all.


	5. Chapter 5

Walking the next day was miserable. The heat was blistering and dry, the sun unrelenting in its effort to sunburn and dehydrate them. Stiles and the rest had long ago shed their outer layers and he was doing as many sun screening spells as he could just to keep himself and John from toasting alive. 

“Ugh, why is it so hot? It _snowed_ last night,” he complained, because voicing it just made him feel better about it.

“This is just how it is,” Laura said. She seemed downtrodden, face flushed, short hair sticking to her cheeks and temples with sweat. The heat had a tendency to suck the energy out of people, Stiles guessed. She, Derek, and Peter seemed to heal from sunburn as soon as it began to set in, though it looked like dehydration could still get to them, it would just take longer. 

Stiles just didn’t understand werewolf healing factors or its limitations, someone should have written a guidebook or something.

The terrain was a strange mixture of broken down suburbs and overtaken wilderness. They were walking down what had once been a side street out of Beacon County, though it was overrun with wild green and purple weeds and tufts of gleaming silvery grass. The remaining pavement was pitted and cracked, turning the walk into an unwieldy game of hopscotch.

The street had trees on either side, with the occasional busted up house mixed in, mailboxes crumpled in heaps at the end of broken up driveways. 

There was a car in the road ahead of them, red, crushed, tires half melted onto the asphalt. 

“Go around it,” Laura said sharply. “We’ll walk in the grass, slow, and get around it together.”

Stiles flexed his fingers nervously, hoping he could throw up a shield quick enough if the car exploded. “Walk close together,” he ordered. 

Laura glanced at him quickly. “Alright.” She moved closer to Peter and Derek while John and Stiles caught up and crowded in.

It felt like they held their breath the whole time they were inching past the vehicle, despite having a good fifteen feet between it and them. They didn’t return back to the road until they’d left the car safely behind, out of sight.

“Turtle,” Derek grunted a few minutes after they’d returned to the pavement. 

Stiles looked up, bracing for some huge, mutated turtle beast—only to find a fairly normal sized box turtle meandering across the street. “Uh, thanks for the warning?”

Derek glared at him.

“They’re small but dangerous,” Laura warned him. “Just don’t accidentally step on it, or even too close if you can help it.”

Stiles watched, amused and fascinated in equal measures, as all three werewolves tiptoed past the turtle that didn’t even seem to notice their presence. 

It wasn’t until he and John were passing it that he heard it—the turtle was crackling like an activated Taser, the smell of ozone and heated asphalt rising from it as it crawled innocently across the road. Stiles whipped around and saw its clearly marked path through the grass which was scorched black. 

“Saw someone step on one a year in,” Laura told them in an undertone. “He didn’t die, but it was like he had been Tased, and it burned a hole clean through his shoe.”

“Huh.” Stiles glanced back at the turtle and felt his fingers itch for a pen and paper. No time for that now, of course.

They stopped to eat eventually, resting in the shade of a scaly looking gray and brown tree with leaves like black feathers. 

“I’ll go look for more water,” Laura sighed, passing Stiles the jug, which only had enough left in it for one last drink. 

He passed it to John.

John eyed him, then drank it and stood. “I’ll go with you. I’ve got a couple more bottles, having extra can’t hurt, and no one should go anywhere alone.”

Stiles tensed, ready to stand and join them, when John pushed down on his shoulder. “Dad,” he snapped. 

“We’ll be fine. Won’t we?” He smiled benignly at Laura, who nodded with a quick, nervous returning smile.

Stiles clenched his hands together as they walked away, fighting the urge to follow them anyway. He’d be able to keep tabs on John magically, so he’d know if anything happened, but he preferred to keep his very human father within arms’ reach. He knew he couldn’t keep tabs on him twenty-four/seven, but being cautious never hurt anyone.

Peter passed Stiles the dried pineapple slices they’d all been sharing, nudging his arm with it when he didn’t immediately take it.

He sighed and accepted it. “Thanks,” he muttered. 

Across from him, Derek was mindlessly scratching through the dirt next to his leg with one hand while eating his pineapple slice with the other. He’d stripped down to a filthy, once-white tank top a while ago, relenting to the heat and stuffing his t-shirt into his bag. His arms and neck gleamed with sweat, beading in the hollow of his throat. His mouth twisted into a sneer when he noticed Stiles’s gaze on him.

Stiles snorted and looked away, though he’d be lying to himself if he acted like he wasn’t checking Derek out; constant survival mode had given him a sleek, muscular build, golden tanned skin marred by scars along his powerful arms and shoulders. Stiles couldn’t help wondering if he’d looked like that before the bombs. 

_Probably not,_ he realized with a jolt. Ten years had passed, which meant Derek had aged, unlike Stiles or John. _Wait…_ So was Stiles twenty-one or thirty-one? He’d been alive for thirty-one years, but for ten of those, he’d been magically frozen in time. He rubbed the heel of his hand over his forehead and eyed Derek, changing the track of his thoughts to keep himself from spiraling. 

He couldn’t really tell how old he was, given the uneven beard and intense glare, the wrinkles that constant exposure to the elements had dug into the corners of his eyes. 

Stiles chewed on his pineapple thoughtfully. Not that it mattered anyway; Derek was nice to look at, but clearly hated Stiles’s guts and honestly, the feeling was mutual at the moment.

A breeze brushed over his head, just a soft _whoosh_ of air near his ear. He turned his head to follow it, enjoying the break from the heat, and shouted, lurching forward to scramble away from the creature.

Derek jumped to his feet, claws extending, and Peter dragged Stiles even further from the creatures.

Stiles used the tree to climb back to his feet, staring at the gathering behind him.

They were beautiful, their wings black with iridescent purple markings, but they were huge, the size of large bats, maybe, which was too big for a butterfly, in Stiles’s opinion.

He couldn’t help watching them, though, eyes caught on the flash-gleam of their wings as they fluttered daintily around their things. “Are they dangerous?” he asked, keeping his grip on the tree. It felt as scaly as it looked, and warm, almost alive. 

“They drink blood,” Derek responded tersely. “Like mosquitos.”

“Huge mosquitos,” Stiles muttered, trying to imagine what a bite from one of those could do to a person. “Are they, like, bulletproof or anything?”

He glanced back, brows lifted. “Not that I know of.”

Stiles nodded. “Step back, I’m not sure if I can do this while they’re flying.”

Derek looked doubtful, but he stepped back to stand next to Peter, crossing his arms like he was just waiting to be unimpressed. 

Stiles flexed his fingers, sparks crackling along his palms. He wished he didn’t have to do this—they were pretty and looked harmless, but it didn’t look like a good shoo would work to get rid of them, and if they were going to drink blood at that size, they were dangerous. 

When a couple flew closer, spindly legs reaching for them, Stiles muttered an oath and threw his hands up.

Streaks of lightning struck out from his fingertips, frying them almost instantly. 

Stiles observed the corpses with a grimace; for one, gross, and for another, he still wasn’t at full power yet, which was disappointing. The spell had been effective, but it wasn’t as powerful as it normally was. It was like eating a favorite recipe and realizing there was a spice missing, just noticeable enough to make a difference. 

He shook his hands, annoyed, and looked at Peter and Derek, who were just staring at him. “I killed them, someone else has to clean them up.”

Peter instantly moved for the smoking bodies, gathering them into a blackened, melty pile. 

Derek eyed him for a moment longer. “Laura thinks you’re pretty powerful,” he said gruffly.

“Isn’t that what you guys wanted?” Stiles bit out. “A powerful witch to grow your crops?”

Derek frowned. “Yes, I guess.”

“Perfect, then it’s working out for you.” He looked at Peter and managed a smile. “Thank you for cleaning them up.”

Peter shrugged and sat in the spot he’d vacated when the butterflies had arrived. 

Something dripped on the back of Stiles’s neck.

He looked up, frowning as storm clouds rolled in. 

“It’s the butterflies,” Derek mumbled. He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders. “We, uh, noticed that wherever the butterflies go, a storm will follow.”

“Wow.” Stiles watched the clouds grow darker, the rain slowly but surely picking up momentum. He knew they were dangerous, all the creatures, but with so much destruction everywhere else, he couldn’t help but be awed by these things man and magic had made in the wake of all the tragedy. Awed and terrified.

The tree shuddered, throwing the dirt around them into upheaval as the roots raised.

The ground pitched under Stiles’s feet, throwing him to his knees. He twisted to watch as the tree uprooted itself. 

Only they weren’t roots coming up out of the dirt: they were claws, talons like bird feet. The feather-like leaves shuddered, the claws digging into the rapidly dampening dirt before launching into the air.

Stiles gaped straight up unashamedly, rain and mud spattering his face. Derek and Peter were scrambling around, but he paid them no mind, watching the vulture fly away. “What…how is it so big?” He blinked rain out of his eyes and looked back down.

Derek and Peter had placed out open containers to catch as much of the rain as they could.

Laura and John returned at a run, full jugs of water grasped in their hands. “We should find cover!” Laura shouted over the downpour. “This could spark a flood!”

Stiles slung his backpack on and helped John with his while he was staring at where the tree had been.

“Where’d it go?”

“It was a bird,” Stiles said, grinning widely.

John looked like he was going to ask, but Peter pushed them both toward the road, cutting him off.

Laura shoved her sopping hair off her face. “Wasn’t there a Target or something in Richardson?”

“Yeah, built pretty solidly, too,” John said. “It’s off the highway, which I’m guessing is too dangerous to travel on.” 

“Yeah, a lot of cars are usually clustered on main roads or highways.” 

Stiles stepped in a puddle and swore, shaking water off his boot before it could seep into his sock.

The storm raged the entire walk, nearly two and a half hours of sloshing, shivering, and chafing in wet denim. The Target was blackened and half covered in thick, wide-leafed ivy that had shiny blue leaves mixed in with the normal green. They ran inside, skidding over broken, slick tiles and past clusters of abandoned carts. 

The place had a faint, rotten smell to it, and every aisle looked picked clean, but the back half of the store had a roof that kept the rain and raging wind out. Stiles stripped off his shirt and wrung it out, annoyed because three hours ago he’d have killed for a freezing cold rain to cool him off. 

He looked around and found a chair with two legs and a back that he could set his shirt on to dry out. “Just guessing there aren’t any towels or blankets left in here.”

“Probably not.” Laura wrung her own shirt off and switched it for a spare in her bag that was only somewhat damp. 

Stiles’s stuff was damp, too, but a damp khaki button up was better than a soaked t-shirt.

Jon had done the same, and looked surprised when he noticed Stiles in the deputy’s shirt, snorting and turning his head away.

“Oh, shut up.” He pulled at the bottom, then looked in his bag. He had khaki pants in there, too, and his jeans were _miserably_ wet, but he was worried. If they had to make a quick getaway, he didn’t want to lose his only pair of jeans. 

One step and he figured he’d risk it; the chafing must be stopped. He stepped around the corner in an effort to preserve some modesty and found himself facing the Employees Only doors. He kicked off his jeans, shuddering as cold air brushed his bared legs, and swapped them for the khakis, hanging the jeans over his arm for the moment. A gust of wind swept down the hall, making the doors sway in place, thumping against whatever was holding them closed.

Stiles glanced over his shoulder, rolled his eyes at himself, and marched up to the doors.

Thunder cracked, shaking the walls hard enough to drop pieces of the roof.

Stiles covered his head, leaping half a foot in the air when a pipe clattered down next to him.

The wind howled outside, nearly drowned out by the rain coming down in sheets. 

Stiles lowered his arms and looked back at the doors.

They were swaying, still knocking rhythmically against something out of sight. Dread creeped over him so slow and subtle that he didn’t realize he was backing away until he bumped into someone. He jumped and whirled around. “Damn it, Peter, you scared the hell out of me.”

Peter’s eyes glowed red in the gloom of the hallway, but otherwise, he seemed fine. He nudged Stiles back to everyone else, and he was all too happy to go with him. 

“Took you long enough.” John, Laura, and Derek were sitting in a wide circle they’d cleared of debris, with a pile of something Stiles couldn’t see over Derek’s shoulder in the center. “Trying to get out of helping?”

“Ha.” Stiles approached slowly. “No, it was just the store room back there. The doors were pinned from the inside and it freaked me out a little. What’d you find?”

John gestured at the pile. “Everything usable left, I guess. Couple water bottles, two packs of boxers, extra socks, and…” He pulled something out of the bottom of the pile. “A single blanket.”

It was a red throw blanket, thin and fuzzy and a little burned on one edge. “Nice!”

“Also some lightbulbs, if you want to give us a hand.” He pointed to a smaller, more fragile pile of lightbulbs of several shapes and sizes.

They were all intact, so Stiles flicked his fingers at them, lighting them to a warm glow.

“Wow.” Laura stared at the lights as she pulled her fingers through her wet hair. “Electricity. I almost forgot what that was like.” She winced as she found a knot, carefully working it out.

“Yeah, that’s gonna be a pain in the ass,” Stiles muttered. “But we’re moving up in the world—we’ve got a blanket now, and two six packs of underwear!” He flopped his jeans on the same chair as his shirt.

Laura snickered.

Stiles found a clear spot near John to sit down, leaning against his backpack and crossing his ankles. “So do we just wait the storm out?”

The wind rocked the building as if to answer him.

“We have to, or else we could get caught in a flood or struck by lightning.” 

“You know this place isn’t going to protect us if it floods, right?”

“We know,” Derek growled. 

“Better than being out in the storm.” Laura dug through her bag until she found a comb with several missing teeth and started brushing it through her hair, wincing as it pulled on the tangles. She must’ve cut her hair herself, judging by the uneven ends at her jaw, though Stiles could understand the appeal of shorter hair in the apocalypse—not much could get caught or snagged in it that way. 

Stiles ran his hand through his own hair, wishing he’d gone back to buzzing it short before all of this happened. He glanced over at Derek, who was talking quietly to Peter on their side of the circle, heads bent together again. 

Laura sighed and tossed her comb into her bag, annoyed. “I guess we should eat.”

They didn’t talk much, probably because they just didn’t know each other that well. Stiles certainly didn’t have much to say, so he took his food and retreated to his and John’s corner, pulling out the Book of Shadows to read while he ate.

John offered Stiles the blanket when they gave up on the idea of leaving that night, but Stiles refused.

“I’m fine,” he insisted. He gestured at the book. “I’m trying to learn how to heat us up without frying anyone or anything, I’ll be fine. _You_ need it, you use it.”

John looked at the book, then at Stiles, a dry, unamused look on his face. “I’m not arguing, not going to say anything. Just pointing out that this is going to end badly. For the record.”

“Noted,” Stiles said sourly. “Now go to bed, old man, we’ve got a lot of walking to do once it stops raining.”

“Old man!” John kicked his leg lightly. “You always were an ungrateful child.”

“You raised me.”

“Shame on me.”

Stiles stuck his tongue out, then grinned when John turned away, shaking his head with mock disgust. 

The spells in the book were things Stiles had never managed before, coaxing plants to take root out of season, balancing the acidity in the soil with magic, providing nutrients in a barren land. There were even spells for using raw wool and cotton to make clothes, no spinning required if you could make the magic bend to your will. Jana had trouble with the wool, apparently, the page littered with crossed out passages, diagrams, and violent scribbles that spoke of frustration. The book detailed the kinds of food she’d managed to grow, the way she’d built spelled plant boxes, shielded from the actual weather to create an optimal climate for each row; she wrote about gathering livestock—sheep and cows were her favorite, though she didn’t go into why; she just spoke about them a lot—and building a homestead for herself. She’d drawn ink from a collection of busted pens she’d gathered to expand her book in recent years. 

Almost all of the pages were garden spells; there was only one protection spell and it was weak. She had no defensive spells, nothing to attack with. 

Stiles wasn’t surprised; garden magic and battle magic rarely both came naturally to one witch. Their spells usually complemented each other: garden and weather magic, battle and shield magic, textile and medicinal. That’s why the collective hadn’t won. They’d tried to make everyone use attack magic rather than protective spells, which were inherently easier. He looked at the book, open to a page detailing the spell for tomato plants, and slapped it shut. Everyone around him had fallen asleep while he’d been reading—save for Peter, who was apparently taking watch. 

“And how are you going to warn us if there’s danger?” Stiles sneered, half-joking, half feeling a little mean. 

Peter tossed a piece of drywall at him, clipping his shoulder.

Stiles couldn’t help laughing. “Yeah, alright, I guess that works.” He looked over at Laura and Derek, senses creeping out like tendrils, feeling over everyone. “They’re happy you’re back. I think they went through hell and you being back was the first win they’ve had in a while.”

Peter scoffed. 

“You have to know that. They missed you, they lost everyone else, and now you’re back.” Stiles shuffled his feet through the fine layer of dirt and cement they hadn’t been able to sweep away. “If someone I thought was gone for good came back, I’d be ecstatic,” he said in a small voice.

Peter was watching him when he looked up, his face surprisingly soft and sympathetic. He looked away after a second, directing that look at Laura and Derek, and let out a long, slow breath, shoulders slumping. He shook his head and rubbed a hand over his eyes. 

“What?”

He kept shaking his head, finally waving a hand at Stiles that either meant “shut the hell up” or “go to bed”, so Stiles decided to do both, curling up around his bag and trying to will himself to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

It must have worked, because he jolted awake sometime later, eyes gummy and blurry, to someone speaking. He cast his senses out, feeling for everyone in a moment of confused, tired panic. John was beside him, Laura and Peter a few feet away, all asleep and generally peaceful, but Derek was further away, tension and defensive fear broadcasting from every inch of him. There were other energies, aggressive and hungry. 

Stiles sat up, boots sliding under him as blood rushed back to his right foot. He shuffled forward, struggling to keep his balance; he must have slept on his leg wrong, which was honestly just his luck.

“—nothing, so you better just move on. We already searched the place,” Derek was saying.

Stiles crept closer, hiding behind debris, and found him standing by the registers, facing three people radiating aggression. 

“Why stay here if there was nothing good?” the man up front asked through fangs, eyes gleaming briefly blue in the dimness. 

“There’s a roof,” Derek said flatly. “It was raining.” 

The leader’s nostrils twitched.

Stiles, hidden behind a pile of broken racks, mouthed a curse. 

“Your group seems pretty well off for wanderers. And…what’s that smell?”

The woman to his right stepped up, inhaling noisily, and grinned, flashing her fangs. “Magic. You puppies got a witch?”

Derek’s shoulders bunched. “Not much of one,” he said casually. “All he does is read and eat our food. He can’t grow anything.”

Stiles held his breath, sliding his foot back carefully so he could go wake the others.

The third wolf looked up sharply and grinned, ears elongating. “Come on out,” he called.

Stiles gritted his teeth, but if he ran, they might chase him and see the other three sleeping, defenseless. He stepped out of his hiding spot, sauntering over to Derek’s side. “What’s up?” he drawled, hoping to project an aura of uselessness while simultaneously sending danger signals to the others. He thought it might work on Laura, the alpha, the best, but he couldn’t tell.

“We want you to come with us,” the leader said, putting on a fake smile. “We could give you a place to stay. You could grow us a farm that we can all use.”

Derek scoffed. “What, you can’t hunt for your food? Pathetic.”

They snarled, taking a step forward.

“Whoa, hey,” Stiles said loudly, putting his hands up. “What kind of place to stay?” he asked coyly, feeling Derek’s sharp betrayal and trying to ignore it. 

The wolves relaxed a bit, and the leader leaned forward eagerly. “We’ve got a house, a pretty nice place. We just need some magic and we’ll have a cozy little home. You’ll have your own room,” he added. “A roof.” He swept his gaze over the holes in the roof of the building.

Stiles’s eye twitched as he shot out magic at Laura, a little psychic dart of _DANGER!_

“You need to leave,” Derek said loudly, having apparently noticed Stiles was feigning interest. “He doesn’t want to go with you.” 

“He hasn’t said that,” the woman pointed out, eyeing Stiles like a piece of meat.

“Let me put it to you this way—we’re bigger than you,” the leader pointed out. “We ain’t seen a witch out in the open, out of their protected bubbles, in years. You’ve got another thing coming if you think we’re leaving without him.”

Stiles felt Laura wake up and prayed she’d wake the others before she came running.

“He doesn’t want to go with you,” Derek said flatly. “Goodbye.”

Stiles wanted to shake him and ask if he’d ever heard of a freaking _bluff_. “No need to get all upset,” he said hastily. “I’m sure we can work this out in a civilized manner.” 

The werewolves relaxed; as long as he was playing at going with them, they were getting their way and didn’t care what Derek said.

Derek looked at Stiles, scowling, but finally stopped talking.

“Now,” Stiles said, relieved, “what do you have for them?” He pointed at Derek.

The leader blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Well, I’d expect an even trade. Do you have anything to give them in return for my magic?”

The sick part was that they actually believed it, they started discussing meats and other survival supplies they had, like Stiles was _literally something to buy._

Derek was glaring and growing tenser the longer they talked about it, teeth bared, ready to snap.

Stiles glanced at him and shook his head slightly, willing him to keep quiet.

“Okay, we’ll give them some meat and sleeping bags, and that’s it.”

Stiles tsked. “That’s not a lot, Tyler.”

He frowned. “My…name is Logan?”

“Meat and sleeping bags? I’m insulted.” Stiles shook his head. “Maybe I should—”

“Maybe _we_ should just take him,” the woman bit out. “And not give away _any_ of our stuff.” She actually started forward, claws sliding out of her fingertips. 

Stiles braced, but was caught off guard when the other wolf lunged from the left. 

Derek met him midair, snarling viciously. 

“Fuck.” Stiles brought his right hand to his chest and then thrust it out quickly, flinging the woman away. 

She sailed through the air, crashing into the carts by the door. 

The leader stalked forward, face all twisted up and partially shifted. 

Derek yowled suddenly, an almost animal sound of pain so terrible that Stiles couldn’t help turning to look. He was pinned to the filthy floor by a metal pipe through his abdomen, gushing blood. He gagged, grabbing for the pipe as the werewolf ground it in.

A howl of rage ripped through the air and Laura _flew_ from the depths of the store, tackling the werewolf standing over her brother so hard that they skidded several yards away as they clawed at each other.

Stiles got cuffed upside the head as the wolf he’d forgotten about tried to grab his shoulder; he dodged away, lifting his hands.

“You’ll be happy with us,” he growled.

“Unlikely. I suggest you gather your pack and go.” He flexed his fingers one at a time.

“What, are you going to kill me with flowers? Throw me?” He looked over his shoulder. “Leah’s already fine.”

“That was a warning shot, trust me.”

Peter crept along the edge of the fight like a shadow, his shift taking over him in a slow roll, like paint running.

A hand wrapped in Stiles’s shirt, dragging him to his toes. “Listen to me. You’re-”

“Not interested.” Stiles pressed a hand to the side of the werewolf’s head and shocked him, just hard enough that he collapsed, twitching, to the floor.

Leah roared and jumped on Laura’s back, ripping her away from the man she’d been fighting. 

Laura snarled and clawed a strip of flesh right off her arm, tearing herself away. 

Stiles ran. “Back up!” he ordered. 

Laura surprised him by instantly flinging herself away, scrambling for Derek while the two werewolves looked at Stiles.

The man looked at their leader and bared his teeth. 

“Don’t,” Stiles suggested, lifting his hands. “Go.”

“We’re gonna kill that bitch ass alpha,” Leah snarled. “Then you’re coming with us.”

“You’re going to sleep and we’re leaving.”

“We’ll track you and skin them alive when we wake up. Including that guy you have hiding back there.” 

Stiles’s eye twitched as power surged to his hands. “Then I guess,” he murmured, “I better make sure not to leave any survivors.”

“What are you gonna do? Fertilize us to death?”

Stiles’s whole body shuddered, his fingers curled inward, and the werewolves choked a second before exploding into ash. He rolled his shoulders as his magic danced within him, lit up and invigorated with his fury at their threat. He’d never taken a life before, not anything human adjacent, at least, and lives had power; protection had even more. Magic was a complicated, intricate thing, and Stiles had powered his up by protecting his group.

He slowly managed to draw himself back to see Laura waiting at Derek’s side as he healed, Peter prowling near the prone werewolf Stiles had left alive, and John hovering near where Stiles had originally been hiding. 

He just looked at Stiles, then the piles of ash, and sighed.

“They seem to have forgotten that witches can do all sorts of magic,” Stiles said slowly. “Not just garden.” And it was true, there were witches everywhere with all kinds of mixtures of magic, and every witch could, with enough practice and stubborn resolve in some cases, learn other types.

Laura looked up at him. “Thank you.” She wiped blood off her cheek and helped Derek sit up, hand tight on his shoulder even when he tried to brush her off. 

Peter huffed and crept away from the werewolf, shifting back to his skin as he walked.

Laura sighed. “Go find your clothes,” she ordered. 

He scowled, but turned around to go hunt them down anyway.

Stiles looked at Derek. “You okay? That looked like it hurt.”

Derek just stared back for a long moment. “Yeah,” he said at last. “Just need a new shirt.” 

Stiles snorted. “Good luck.”

John clasped Stiles on the shoulder. “You good?”

He nodded, then shrugged. “It’s weird, but they were going to follow through on those threats.” 

John nodded slowly. “Here, I grabbed your bag. And the clothes you left out,” he added before Stiles could ask about his jeans.

“You’re a god among men,” Stiles gushed, cheered. “Thanks.” He put the straps over his shoulders.

Laura stood, kicking some broken wood out of her way. “Do you know if they’ve got more pack around here? I don’t want to get ambushed.”

Stiles glanced at the werewolf on the floor, grimacing. He shook his head and knelt beside him, touching a fingertip to his temple to dig into his memories. “They’ve got a set up a couple miles west of here—four more at the house they built. They were sent to look for supplies.”

Laura swore. “Alright, we better move on then, before they come looking for these guys.” She glanced back at the dust of the other two thoughtfully.

Stiles pulled himself free of the werewolf’s mind, shaking off the slimy feeling the invasion gave him. He, John, and Peter waited up front while Laura and Derek ran back to get their things. Apparently, Laura had woken to Stiles’s danger signals and had woken Peter and John, planning to gather everyone’s things quietly and sneak up to help until she’d heard Derek cry out, smelled his blood. Stiles understood that; if it’d been John, he’d have dropped everything, too. Speaking of… “Thanks for hanging back,” he said, turning to eye his dad suspiciously. “That wasn’t like you.”

“Oh, I wasn’t much use in a werewolf fight.” He patted his holstered gun. “But I was ready anyway.” 

Stiles stared at it; he’d forgotten John even had it, but of course he did. He’d raced home from work that day, and Stiles had done the spell before he could change or take off his utility belt. Who knew if it’d work against anything now, but a bullet to the face might slow some of the creatures out there down, at least. 

“Okay,” Laura said. “Let’s go. Hey, at least it’s not raining anymore!” she chirped. 

It was still dark outside, though the sun was making its slow progression over the horizon to the east, so it wouldn’t be for long. Stiles was just glad it wasn’t raining anymore, even though he was wearing khaki head to toe and slipping every other step in mud.

Laura and John talked about routes, apparently being the most familiar with the roads and side roads in the area. Laura had a very specific, straightforward way she wanted to take up north, but John pointed out that her way would probably be full of cars and dangerous animals. He pressed her about where up north, exactly, she was aiming for, but she wouldn’t elaborate. 

Stiles figured that everywhere had dangerous animals and cars, but he didn’t point it out to them. Having something to focus on probably gave them a sense of purpose and something to do, so he wasn’t going to take that from them.

Derek fell back to walk beside Stiles after a while, his boots squelching in time with Stiles’s. “Thanks,” he said at length.

He shrugged. “I didn’t do much.”

“You didn’t go with them.”

Stiles turned to grin at him. “Oh, why would I do that when the company here is so good?”

Derek’s face immediately fell into a glower and he stalked ahead to walk with Peter.

Stiles grinned a little, turning his head so no one would notice, and that’s when he saw it. He slowed to a stop.

It grew curling and subtle between a trash can and recycle bin, wide blue petals as big as his face curved over the bins. Words scrawled over the petals as he stared, magic oozing off of it.

‘ _Will trade rare goods for meat. Follow markers to find me._ ’ It was a magical marker, something only other witches could see. He couldn’t help a delighted smile that fell a second later as he remembered the werewolves they’d just encountered. 

Apparently witches were somewhat of a rare commodity and if this witch was doing well, that probably meant they were accomplished with garden magic, especially if they were able to start trading for other things. 

Not only might Stiles lead that other pack to the witch if he told the others about it, he also might be risking his and John’s…protection detail, so to speak.

It wasn’t great to think, but Laura and Derek were only keeping them around because Stiles could wield magic. If they found a witch who could _actually_ do garden magic, with proof, they might decide to ditch them. And why wouldn’t they? This other witch had stuff to trade _now_ , for meat, which the Hales had already proven they could provide.

Stiles glanced back at the marker, frowning, then ran to catch up with the others. He’d just keep it to himself for now, and think on it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just felt like posting today. It's hot and humid and miserable here, so...

Stiles shuddered, holding tight to John’s forearm. He hoped the water wasn’t strong enough to sweep them apart, but they were all freezing and had been walking for hours already, shaking with the cold.

John slipped, letting out a startled yelp as his head dunked briefly under the water; he nearly dragged Stiles under with him until Peter grabbed the strap of John’s bag and set him on his feet again.

They were all holding onto each other in an uneven, shaky chain just in case. The flood had come out of nowhere; they’d been walking down a sidewalk, it was clear and sunny, and then water was gushing down the street, catching them in seconds. It was up to Stiles’s waist already, and then it’d started to rain.

“Go!” Laura shouted. “To the trees, we can climb if we have to!” She was leading the way, barely struggling against the tug of the water; she and Peter had the edge of being alpha werewolves, and didn’t seem to notice how hard the rest of them were fighting not to be knocked off their feet. 

The trees were thin and spindly, but they worked as anchors, at least. Stiles hooked his arm around the trunk and looked at John, noticing him shivering, his lips turning a worrying shade of blue. Fuck. He looked around, then lifted his fingers, trying a spell to dry their clothes that he’d found.

Laura yelped. “Fire!”

Stiles looked up and swore. “Sorry, my bad!” He waved his hand to put it out.

John shook his head but didn’t speak, resting his forehead against the tree. 

Stiles looked around, blinking rain out of his eyes.

A large red lily grew out of the side of one of the trees, curling petals dipping into the flood waters. It glowed with magic, curling script scrawling over it. He rubbed his eyes and looked at Peter, who was watching him. He sighed and turned to Laura. “I think there’s somewhere we can go!” He felt like he had to shout over the rain, though he was pretty sure she could hear him.

She frowned. “Where?” 

“There’s a witch nearby,” he admitted. “They might have supplies, but they’ll only trade for meat. They’ll have protection around their home, it should keep the water out.”

Laura swept her hair out of her face. “How do you know that?” she demanded.

“There are…magical markers.” Thunder cracked, making him wince. “You can only see them if you have magic yourself.” He flicked his fingers at the flower, revealing it to them briefly.

Laura’s eyes flicked to it and back to Stiles, narrowed, the rain slipping down her cheeks like tears and at odds with the hard expression on her face. 

The rain stopped abruptly, leaving them standing in the moving, waist deep water.

“Alright,” she said finally, wiping her face on her wet sleeve. “But we don’t have meat to trade.”

Derek nudged her shoulder. “I can hear cows somewhere.” 

Laura licked her lips and glanced over her shoulder, then down. “Are we close?”

“I can get us closer, if you want. Before we get the meat.” 

“Do that.” 

The water was still churning, though not as violently, so Stiles took the lead. They were close, he could tell due to the sheer number of markers that were popping up as they waded onward.

John looked at Stiles when the water had fallen to mid-thigh. “Wanna explain what just happened?”

Stiles’s brows furrowed, but he didn’t look at him. “Nothing happened. Most of our stuff is waterlogged now, this witch claims to have supplies.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone earlier?”

“Might be dangerous.” Stiles swallowed. He knew the Hales could hear them perfectly, just like John knew, so he had to walk a careful line between telling the truth and not giving too much away. “I didn’t want to accidentally lead the pack of those jerks to this witch, you know? They’re doing fine, apparently, it would be cruel to lead some power hungry werewolves to them.”

John nodded slowly, because he could see through Stiles and knew that wasn’t all of it. Thankfully, he didn’t press about it, so Stiles let out a breath.

“Why did you change your mind?” Laura asked grudgingly.

“Like I said, all of our stuff is waterlogged, and my dad and I can’t handle the cold like you guys can.”

Guilt flashed across her face. “Oh. Right.”

They made it to a hilly, open field, sopping wet and shivering, where four cows were picking away at the muddy grass. The water was draining away almost as suddenly as it’d washed through; Derek and Laura didn’t seem surprised by it, but couldn’t say what’d caused it.

Stiles didn’t realize how exhausted he was until his legs started shaking while they stood watching the cows; a quick, sideways glance at John revealed his stoic, I’m-fine-see expression, the one he used when he didn’t want anyone to ask if he was okay so he didn't have to lie.

“We’ll catch some of these and take them to the witch,” Laura said, putting a hand on John’s shoulder, her face creased with worry. “Get you guys some dry clothes.” 

“Okay. We’re close now, it shouldn’t be…”

Laura turned to see what Stiles was gaping at. “Oh, yeah, they multiply.”

As they watched, four cows became five, then six as two of them simply…stepped out of two of the others, whole and complete, like a cloning device from a cartoon. The two new ones wandered away, nosing at the grass like the rest of them. 

“The cows just…multiply,” Stiles repeated, to see how it felt. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

“Yep.” She looked at Derek. “Two, you think?”

“Yeah.” He rolled his neck and flicked his claws out.

Stiles turned away when they stalked toward the herd, hoping he would miss the bloodbath.

Beside him, Peter suddenly went tense, leaning forward on the balls of his feet and snarling.

Stiles followed his gaze. “Fucking balls,” he muttered, spotting the deer picking its way toward them.

Peter bared his teeth.

“You’ll get burned,” John pointed out. “Go get a cow if you need to kill something.”

Peter glowered at him.

Stiles watched the deer watching them and wondered if it was going to attack. “Are they edible?” he blurted, flushing when John glanced at him in surprise.

Peter nodded, licking his lips.

“Hmm.”

Peter crept down the hill.

Stiles followed him, gaze locked on the doe that showed no signs of fear, stamping her hooves almost like she was threatening them. “Little closer,” he urged Peter, grinning at his answering rumble.

The deer lowered her head between her shoulders as they grew closer.

Stiles stepped out from behind Peter, lifting his left hand toward his face. 

The deer opened her mouth, fire blazing over the wet ground.

Stiles blew against his palm.

Fire met ice in an explosion of steam and snow crystals, and Peter didn’t even hesitate; he shot through the cloud of steam and leaped onto the doe, fangs latching into her throat.

Stiles turned away at the first bright splash of blood.

Atop the hill, John had his hands on his hips, watching them with arched brows.

Stiles waved awkwardly.

The witch lived a short distance from the hilly field where they’d found the cows, thankfully, so they didn’t have to carry them far. The wind picked up as the temperature dropped, which sucked in their still-soaked clothes.

There was a long dirt driveway first, partially concealed by plants with long, sharp leaves, that led to a fence crackling with magic and the hazy dark shape of a building in the distance. It was so well protected that they couldn’t get within four feet of the gate, but that was close enough. Stiles gestured at the others to stay back and stepped as close as he could, raising a hand to the wall of protections. He closed his eyes and sent a friendly burst of magic to the house.

It took a couple minutes of shivery, buzzing silence before a woman emerged, stopping just behind the protected gate. “What?” She looked like she was in her forties, with dark, shoulder length hair, dressed in a green wool sweater and bright blue pants that looked marbled in different shades. 

“We brought meat,” Stiles said quickly. “We wanted to trade for some supplies. We got caught in a flood.”

She eyed the group behind him. “That’s a lot of wolves.”

“And a lot of meat,” Stiles pointed out.

She pursed her lips, then nodded. “Right. Just you and _one_ wolf may come in. Not the alphas,” she added.

Peter growled. 

“Just watch out for my dad,” he muttered.

Peter obligingly moved closer to John, who looked exasperated, one hand resting on his gun.

Derek moved all three carcasses into the boundaries of the fence with Stiles’s help, though he probably didn’t need it.

“I’m Stiles,” he said, once they’d successfully moved the meat to the house, which had revealed itself to be a patchwork little cottage. It’d been repaired and fortified with magic, Stiles could tell.

“Bizzy,” the woman said, then shrugged when they looked at her. “Childhood nickname, it stuck.”

Stiles looked around. Inside the protections, he could see gardens everywhere, separated into neat sections; the sky was sunny and clear, the air just warm enough to be comfortable, and there were piles of multicolored wool on the porch.

“So, you guys are passing through?” Bizzy asked, putting her hands on her hips.

“We’re traveling, but we need supplies. Saw your signs when we got caught in the flood.”

She nodded. “So what do you need?”

Derek glanced at Stiles, tensing.

Stiles tried to ignore him. “Spare clothes for cold snaps, medicine if you’ve managed it, vegetables, fruit. We’re set on meat, as you’ve noticed.” 

She snorted. “I bet. Well,” she sighed, “you guys brought a ton of meat and you’re the first people I’ve seen in weeks, so I can give you enough of everything for your whole group. Come inside, everything I have ready to go is in there.” She led them into the cottage; the front room was filled with untreated wooden shelves, lined with jars and bottles, stacks of finished wool. “Clothes are this way. I’m afraid I don’t have much made with cotton, I can’t quite manipulate it the way I can with wool.” She shrugged. “Can’t grow a lot of cotton yet either, but wool is easy to come by.” 

Derek nodded like that made perfect sense.

Stiles didn’t get it, but didn’t bother asking.

“Here, your alpha looked like she wore my size, this should fit her. You two can estimate for the other two while I put some food together.”

Stiles watched her go, trailing his fingers over the purple wool sweater she’d handed him. “Do the sheep just come in all these colors?”

“Yep. Can’t find white or brown wool for anything but blue and purple are pretty common around here.”

“Huh.” He wandered over to where she was packing things into a woolen bag. “How do you preserve the food?” Or make the clothes? Jana had some spells for that, but not many, and none he could do yet.

Bizzy glanced up at him. “Ahh. Magic.” She eyed him.

Stiles pushed his magic out to meet hers.

She jumped, fingers sparking. “I’ll trade some of mine for some of yours,” she said instantly. “I could use some firepower.”

“I don’t have them written down.”

She nodded and handed him the bag, bulging with jars of vegetables and fruit. “Hang on.”

Derek had a pile of clothes in his arms when Stiles looked at him. “John is around your size, right?” he asked gruffly.

“Close enough. Are there pants? Just in case?”

He nodded. “And socks.”

“Nice.”

Bizzy returned with a sheaf of loose papers in one hand, a legal pad and pens in the other. “Three of mine for three of yours?” 

“Which ones?” He nodded at the loose papers.

“Preservation of food, wool manipulation, water purification. I figured they’d be useful.” She lifted a brow.

Stiles nodded. “Alright. Fireballs, combustion, a powerful shield?” 

“How powerful?”

“I’ve not had anything break it so far.” He jerked his thumb at her roof. “Stronger than that one, for sure.”

She thought it over. “Okay, agreed.” She held out the legal pad first. “I’ll pack these in with your food. I’ve got some balms here—just stuff to fight infections and treat burns—that I packed, too.”

“Thanks.” Stiles leaned against the wall and started writing. His own Book of Shadows was lost in the rubble of his and John’s house back in Beacon Hills. He hadn’t even thought to check if it’d survived in the confusion of waking up. He felt a sharp pang of regret, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t recreate it. The spells were a part of him. The ink gleamed on the paper as he scrawled, magic zipping down his fingertips to preserve the spell much longer than regular ink and paper would manage on their own.

“Thanks,” she said sincerely when he handed the pad back. She handed him the bag with the balms, spells tucked neatly in beside them. “Got it all?”

“Yep. Thank you, we really needed this.”

She nodded, eyeing him rather closely. “Let me help you carry everything.”

Derek remained suspiciously quiet as the three of them shuffled all of their things to the gate. While he was passing things to Laura, Peter, and John, Bizzy turned to Stiles. 

“You could stay, if you wanted. I could use an extra pair of hands, and I could teach you some stuff.”

Stiles smiled tightly. “Thanks, but not this time.” He glanced at Derek, who was studiously not looking at him, then at Peter and Laura, who were staring.

Bizzy pursed her lips. “I suppose.” She didn’t press.

They retreated to the woods to organize their things, rightfully paranoid about standing out in the open with their new goodies. Stiles and John changed into blessedly dry clothes before anything else; the wool was warm, too, keeping the icy wind from cutting straight through them.

“This is amazing,” Laura chirped as she and John sorted everything between five bags. 

They were putting most of the heavy stuff into the werewolves’ bags, which made sense, but also ended up with most of the _food_ in their bags. That made Stiles uncomfortable and nervous, but he didn’t speak up; they were supposed to be working together, which meant a modicum of trust was expected.

Derek stuffed a sweater into his bag, wrapped securely around jars of sliced peppers, cabbage, and onions. His face was set in a somewhat sulkier scowl than usual, his movements quick and stiff.

“Hey, we’ve got lettuce now! And cucumbers, that’s pretty exciting.” Stiles grinned, elbowing him.

“Uh-huh.” He turned to grab a jar of strawberries.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

Laura, at least, was in high spirits. “We’re going to make it. This is more than we’ve had at a time in years.” She beamed at a jar of carrots. “It’s going to be great.” Once the bags were packed—and after everyone had snuck a few bites—they got to walking again.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy this chapter, it's one of my faves :D

The sudden acquisition of so many desperately needed supplies gave them all an energy boost, enough so that they made quite a bit of progress by the time the sun was setting. They hit a city before dark, which gave them a pause.

“We should go around,” Laura said anxiously. “All those cars…”

“Going around on foot will take several days,” John pointed out. “We’ll be out in the open and still have to navigate roads with cars.” 

She twisted her fingers. “Yeah…” Her gaze darted over the buildings, the broken city limit sign, the road with chunks of asphalt sticking up like waves in a stormy sea. The road was also clogged with cars, all likely ready to blow given the slightest provocation. 

Dangerous, but not any _more_ dangerous than following the equally clogged road that went around the city, bracketed on either side by an overgrown field and a violent river. 

She grimaced. “I guess it’ll be faster this way. Through…that.”

Stiles crossed his arms, fingers tapping anxiously on his biceps. Lots of cars, probably plenty of mutated animals to dodge…pigeons. He could only imagine what they’d turned into.

“We’ll need a plan,” John said firmly. “We can’t just walk in.”

“Sidewalks are the safest bet.” Stiles peered into the city. “Less cars, especially if we use side streets and go behind the buildings as much as we can, places where cars couldn’t have fit.”

“We’ll need to find a place to sleep.” Derek glanced at Stiles and away. “Being tired can cause mistakes, get us killed.” 

“Plenty of buildings to choose from,” John replied. “I’m sure one of them will be usable.” 

“Okay.” Laura set her hands on her hips. “We’ll go slow and careful, stick close together, try to use side streets and alleys. Everyone ready?”

“Yep. I’ll have a shield to put up, but it’s not foolproof.” Stiles shrugged uncomfortably. “I haven’t seen or felt one of the cars explode, so it’s not like I’ve had a chance to test it.”

“Good enough.”

Peter snorted, so Stiles made a face at him, insulted. 

The sheer volume of cars was intimidating. They were crowded up and down the streets, run up on the sidewalks, sometimes through buildings. They were so close together that setting one off would cause a catastrophic domino effect. 

Laura gestured at an alley, blessedly free of vehicles, that cut down to the end of the block between two rows of tall, unrecognizable buildings. Pieces of the walls, the signs and windows, lay crumbled in their path, but that was easier to navigate than the cars. 

Something landed with a heavy _whump_ behind them. 

Stiles spun, throwing a shield around them and catching his breath, ready for an explosion to blast against the shield.

A pigeon, bright yellow and orange, had landed behind them, watching as they stared at it with abject fear. It was at least as big as a bald eagle, and turning blue and purple as they watched.

“I think we’re okay,” Laura whispered after a minute of silence passed and nothing exploded. 

Stiles dropped the shield and shook his hands, fingertips tingling. It was almost full dark, shadows stretching into every corner. “Where are we gonna stay?”

“There’s a hotel at the end of the block,” Laura replied. “I mean, it’ll be in bad shape like everything else, but maybe some of the middle floors will be usable.” 

“Sounds good to me.”

The hotel had a hint of magic in it, not much more than everything else that’d gotten dusted with it during the bombings, but it felt different, centered. Someone had tried to protect the building; they’d failed, but they’d tried, which was more than could be said about any other buildings they’d come across. That meant some of the middle floors _were_ intact, that some of the windows were still whole and keeping things out. 

Stiles looked around the lobby as they picked their way through, boots crunching over dead leaves and plaster chunks. The desk was half collapsed under a giant chunk of the ceiling, some displays were scattered across the floor, and there was the carcass of some unfortunate animal near the elevators. The dining room had several smashed and melted flat screen TVs hanging off the walls, wires dangling and swaying gently in a breeze that came through the busted front doors. The tables were all pushed up against the broken windows, as if someone had tried to fortify them, and the carpet was torn up in shreds. 

Stiles shuddered and looked away when he noticed a smashed, grayed hand under a piece of cement. 

The stairwell was still standing, but there were chunks of the walls and decomposing bits of luggage buried under some of the rubble that made it difficult to navigate, but they managed somehow.

“Not bad,” Laura declared after kicking cement chunks out of the stairwell doorway so they could get out onto the fourth floor. 

She wasn’t wrong—most of the walls had minimal holes and cracks, the doors were still upright in one piece, and the ceiling was marked with water damage but not much else, which was not bad at all.

“Can’t smell anything dead around,” Derek murmured. “Not on this floor.”

Even if there had been, it’d have rotted away after ten years, but Stiles didn’t point that out.

They checked rooms until they found one that seemed like it hadn’t been in use before. There was dust _everywhere,_ including on the made up bed, and two frankly horrifying spiders that made quick escapes once they opened the windows by force. They closed the glass after the spiders were gone and dragged the dusty linens off the mattress, shaking the pillows loose of their cases, and yanked the mattress to the floor. 

Derek and Peter left the room while Stiles was flicking light into the dead bulbs around the room. 

“Why do you have to put them in lightbulbs? Couldn’t you just…” She made a gesture like she was flinging water at the ceiling. 

“If I didn't, the light wouldn’t be contained. It gets intense and can burn people, melt things.” He set his bag down and sighed with relief. His shoulders throbbed now that the weight had been lifted, a deep ache that came from unfamiliar exercise. 

Derek and Peter returned with mattresses in tow, all stripped of their sheets. “We thought we might as well sleep in beds while we have the chance.”

“Good idea,” John said warmly, and Derek flushed.

Stiles snickered.

They arranged the mattresses around the room as well as they could, shoving unnecessary furniture up against the windows as extra protection. 

“Once we have a permanent place, we need to raid places like this for the mattresses.” Laura sprawled across hers, eyes closed. She didn’t bother grabbing a pillow or using one of the blankets they’d gotten from Bizzy, relaxing into sleep almost instantly. 

Peter snorted at her and chose the bed closest to the windows, between Stiles and Laura’s chosen mattresses, which wasn’t all that surprising. Since he now had a bag to carry, he curled up around that, eyes gleaming briefly red before he closed them.

John groaned loudly as he sat down on his bed, and flipped Stiles off for laughing at him. “You’re a terrible child,” he hissed, flopping back.

“And you’re a grumpy old man.”

“I can’t even argue, I _feel_ old.” He put his arm over his eyes and let out a long breath.

Stiles flicked his fingers at the lights, extinguishing them and plunging the room into solid darkness.

Derek muttered something and stumbled to his own bed. 

Stiles shook his head. He was exhausted, he was finally warm, and had a blanket and a _mattress_ to sleep on, so any complaints could be taken up with management. He fell into a weird, vivid dream that he couldn’t put into words if he tried, just flashes of color and emotions, faces, noises, a sense of urgency and fear. He jerked himself awake, tangled in his blanket and sweating heavily. 

It was still dark outside, so he must not have slept long; he wished he had a clock of some kind, despite the fact that time was now in general meaningless. It was familiar, comfortable, knowing what time it was, knowing how long it’d be until sunrise, something he’d had access to most of his life. 

Stiles rubbed his face and kicked his blanket off, then tore his sweater over his head, balling it up on top of his backpack. He looked around, but it was too dark to really see anything, so he cast his senses, feeling over everyone to reassure himself that they were all there. Having walls, a roof, and a door had given them a sense of security, he guessed, because everyone was asleep and none of them had thought to schedule watches. 

He checked that his bag was tucked between his and John’s beds and got up, creeping carefully across the room and out the door. He made a circle of light with his fingers and went into the room next to theirs first, straight to the generally intact but very dusty bathroom to use the toilet. The water had long evaporated, but it was better than going in the woods, and was probably one of the few still in one piece, so Stiles was going to take advantage while he could.

“One of many reasons I never went camping,” he muttered as he returned to the hallway.

The others were still sleeping, so it wouldn’t do any harm to do a quick perimeter sweep, which would give Stiles the peace of mind to go back to bed. 

The air was stale, undisturbed as he walked, with few marks to show the devastation that had ravaged the rest of the world. The carpet was thickly caked with dust and somewhat stained due to whatever had managed to leak through the upper floors. Stiles touched his fingers to the Braille under room 427’s placard, and jumped as panic jolted through him. It wasn’t his, but it took him a few seconds to realize that, to get his heart to stop racing enough to understand where it was coming from. 

By the time he did, Derek was stomping out into the hallway, his hair sticking up in all directions as he zeroed in on Stiles and marched toward him. His eyes glowed gold in the dark. “Where are you going?” he growled, his voice husky with sleep. 

“No one was on watch, so I was making sure nothing was going to sneak up on us. Not that I have to explain myself to you,” he added, turning away.

“I…can help,” Derek offered awkwardly, following when Stiles started walking.

“Fine. I was going to check the next two floors up,” he lied breezily. “You’re invited if you want to come.”

Derek scoffed, but he also kept pace behind him.

Stiles maturely didn’t crow with victory and climbed over a four foot wide chunk of concrete to get into the stairwell. He wobbled at the top of it and lost his balance, throwing a hand out to catch himself. His palm smacked the wall and something thick and sticky slid under his fingers, making him recoil automatically. Before he could hit the floor face-first, Derek grabbed the back of his shirt. The collar yanked tight around his throat, the seams straining, but it steadied him enough to regain his footing.

“Thanks,” he rasped, pulling away and rubbing his throat.

“Sorry.”

Stiles waved him off and started walking. “Can you tell if anything else is in the building?”

Derek shrugged. “Kind of? There’s a lot of little noises to sort through. Rodents and bugs, and everyone back there, and you.” He didn’t give Stiles time to properly react to apparently how much noise he was making. “Can _you_ tell? You seem to know things, too.”

“I can sense people, humanoid presences, but animals are…harder. Their energy is alive, obviously, but different and not like mine, so it’s hard to understand it.” He shrugged and pointed at the half-blocked door to the fifth floor. “Help?”

Derek eyed the concrete, then looked up and pointed. “Looks like the sixth level is off the tour.”

One of the steps had collapsed, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the stairs. “That was a _terrible_ attempt at a joke,” Stiles said, “and there are other stairwells. Can you move that, or is it too big for you?”

“I can move it,” he growled, stalking forward.

Stiles smirked and stood back, shining his light on it. “Do you need help? Maybe I can get Laura-”

Derek turned his head to snarl at him, then focused on curling his fingers around the crumbling edges of the block. The tips of his ears sharpened, elongating as he slipped into a partial shift, and he _heaved_. He twisted and dumped it over the handrail, sending a bone-rattling crash through the stairwell.

Stiles clapped his hands over his ears automatically, which had the unfortunate side effect of extinguishing his light and leaving them in the dark. “Nice! That should wake everyone up _in a complete fucking panic._ ” 

Derek tilted his head to listen, so Stiles did the same, or his version of it, casting his senses out like a net and waiting. 

Except for a blip of restlessness and anxiety, they remained asleep. “That…isn’t actually reassuring,” Stiles decided, worried. 

Derek looked concerned, too. “I’m sure the sound was muffled. And they’re really tired. That flood…”

Stiles nodded. “Right.” His muscles were still sore and achy from that, he could only imagine how John felt, and it wasn’t like werewolves were invincible, even alphas. “They feel fine,” he said quietly, examining the emotions he was getting back from them. “Sleeping.”

Derek nodded. “Come on. We’ll check around this floor, then go back.”

“Okay.” Stiles followed him onto the fifth floor. It had a little more damage than the fourth, but it was still in pretty good shape considering the circumstances. They went left out of the stairwell, creeping along past the closed doors. Stiles couldn’t help wondering if they should check every nook and cranny of the hotel for supplies, but they still had a ways to go, and weighing themselves down would just hinder their progress. No one had found this place yet, and it’d been ten years. They could always come back. 

That reminded him… “How _is_ there anything left?”

Derek glanced at him. “What?”

Stiles snorted, amused at himself—it wasn’t like Derek had heard that train of thought. “It’s been ten years. Why haven’t people raided this place and everywhere else to oblivion?”

Derek shrugged. “There were billions of humans, way fewer of us in comparison. There’s just not enough people left to get everything.”

“How’d we run into a pack _and_ a witch already then?”

“We’re moving,” Derek pointed out. “They’ve settled in places they consider safe.” He sounded bitter.

Stiles felt dumb for not making that jump, even though he was sure he was right. “But still, there’s very few people left,” he pressed. “By all rights, it should be _hard_ to run into anyone else.”

Derek stepped over a large puddle of something dark and thick. “Not if they’re set up on the path that we’re taking because it’s the least hostile area in the region, which is the same reason we’re taking the path we’re on.”

Stiles shook his head. “I guess.” He braced his hand on the wall to get over the wide puddle, grimacing. “Do you—what’s that?”

There was warm, pink light coming from further ahead.

Stiles rushed toward it.

“Stiles, it could be dangerous!” Derek hissed as he chased him.

Stiles stepped around a corner. The hallway had a reading nook set up on the outside wall with a domed window; part of it had fallen into the hall, trapping a large brown and gray rabbit behind the glass. The inside bits of its ears glowed pink as it glared out at them. 

“Looks real dangerous,” Stiles scoffed. When he glanced over his shoulder, Derek was looking around nervously, eyes narrowed. “What?”

“Rabbits glow when they sense danger,” he said matter-of-factly. 

“Uh…hate to be the one to tell you this, but it’s possible that _we’re_ the danger, dude. It’s a prey animal, you’re a werewolf…” Stiles made a grand gesture at the rabbit.

Derek just shook his head. “Its heart is pounding.”

Stiles sighed. “Well, whatever it’s scared of, I can’t just leave it there to starve.” He picked up the glass, setting it on the cushions of the reading nook.

The rabbit shot off, taking the pink glow with it, disappearing down the hall.

As the light faded, the hair on the back of Stiles’s neck stood, a prickle of awareness suddenly putting his senses on alert. He checked on the others, but they were still asleep, blissfully unaware.

“We should go back,” Derek whispered as if he, too, could sense it.

Stiles shook his head. “Slow,” he said at last. “Just in case.” He swallowed against his dry throat and walked next to Derek, close enough that their shoulders brushed with every step. Neither of them moved away.

An eerie sound filled the halls, like a woman singing in the distance; no words, just vocalizations that made the creeping feeling of being watched even worse.

Derek went rigid. “Go to the stairs,” he whispered. 

“We can’t lead it to them,” Stiles pushed back.

Derek flexed his fingers, claws sliding out. “Go,” he ordered. “We’re out in the open-”

Something jumped on his back, three fleshy, thin tails wrapping around his throat.

Stiles leaped forward to help.

A huge, shadowy paw slapped his chest, knocking him several feet away onto his ass in the puddle. 

He clambered to his feet, wheezing, one hand clutched to his chest. 

An enormous, shadow-shrouded cat stood between him and where Derek was fighting a six-legged, three-tailed possum. 

The cat opened its mouth and let out that singing sound, which Stiles realized was some kind of howl. As it stalked toward him, it became less shadowed, distinct, with tufted ears and gray fur. A lynx, stalking the halls of a hotel. Sure. 

Stiles cupped his hand, backing away, and hurled a fireball at it.

The lynx scattered into shadows, then stepped out of the wall next to him.

“Shit.” He tripped over his own feet backing away and landed hard, looking up to see a huge paw coming toward his face. He threw his hands up.

The claws bounced off his shield and the lynx snarled in frustration.

Stiles flexed his hands, but the combustion spell only scattered it into shadowy bits again.

Derek suddenly reached through the shield and yanked Stiles to his feet. “Come on.” He had blood smeared over his face and slow healing bruises on his throat, but he’d apparently won the fight against the possum.

The lynx was blocking the stairwell, head low between its shoulders. Another lynx melted out of the shadow on the wall beside the first one.

“Get into a room,” Stiles ordered. “Maybe they’ll lose interest.”

Derek laughed dryly. “Sure.” They backed away together, watching as they stalked them. Derek threw open a room at their back and pulled Stiles in, then slammed the door.

This room was on the inner wall of the hotel, so it shouldn’t have had a window to outside, but it had double glass doors leading to a balcony. 

Stiles, frowning, went to investigate while Derek was securing the door; maybe there was an escape route.

The balcony was connected to all of the rooms on this floor, a long circle of metal fencing. There was a pair of metal chairs outside the door with a two top table, overlooking the indoor pool and recreational area. 

Derek gasped.

Stiles whipped around in time to see the three lynx crawl out of the floor, shoulder to shoulder. He ran back to Derek, throwing his hands up.

The ice he threw at them slid right off their fur, crumbling to the floor in a glittering white pile. 

The lynx in the middle lunged, claws outstretched, and Derek shoved Stiles out of the way before he could throw up a shield. Claws raked across Derek’s chest, making him yelp and leaving wide, bloody gouges. 

Stiles grabbed his arm and hauled him back, out to the balcony, dragging him when his feet tangled. Maybe they could get into one of the other rooms and escape before the lynx realized where they’d gone.

“Stiles.” Derek pulled weakly at his arm; he was still bleeding pretty heavily, and his wounds weren’t healing as quickly as they should.

“We can make it, there are other rooms-”

“No, they’re-” Derek lurched forward as a lynx struck his back. He tipped just a little too far over the rail and Stiles couldn’t let go before Derek’s weight toppled them both over the edge. 

Stiles managed a spell to push them away from the wall as they fell, squeezing his eyes shut.

Derek yanked him closer, crushing him to his chest, and then they were slamming into the water that felt like stone before they fell under the surface with an almighty splash.

Stiles pushed up hard, sputtering and whipping some gelatinous substance off his stinging face. His whole body throbbed from the impact, despite Derek’s best efforts to shield him, each limb squeaking with protest as he floundered to gain his footing. The pool was filthy, green and murky, and freezing; something solid brushed against Stiles’s leg, making him jump away. He wished he could see better, but he had a feeling that whatever was under the water, he didn’t want to know. 

Beside him, Derek was thrashing, so Stiles caught his upper arm and pulled his head above the water. 

“You good?”

Stiles could barely see it when Derek nodded, coughing up the disgusting water. His back was still laid open, still bleeding, if the warm wet coating Stiles’s fingers where he was holding him up was any indication.

“You’re going to get gangrene,” Stiles muttered. 

Derek tensed, his gaze locking on something over Stiles’s shoulder.

He turned, squinting in the dark.

The lynx were creeping out between the bar and a concession stand, their howls filling the room like a ghostly chorus. They spread out, circling the pool like sharks preparing for a kill.

“None of my spells are working on them.” Stiles watched the closest of them as it paced closer to the water, eyeing them like it was thinking of a way to get them without getting into the offensive water. “They’re too…”

“Not really solid,” Derek supplied.

“Something like that.” They were basically shadows, both to him and in reality, and his spells were tailored to physical things. He thought about waking Laura or Peter, but he wasn’t sure if they could even help. He flexed his fingers. This would be less terrifying, he reflected, if it wasn’t so dark. His eyes had adjusted somewhat, but there was no light, and he could really only make out movements and changes in color. “Are they…”

“Getting closer? Yeah.”

Stiles swore quietly, then paused, thinking over all of his spells. “Oh, I’m a moron. Hang on, hang on,” he babbled when Derek tried to ask him what, flapping a hand. He had a spell to create light, enough to fill a room even, but his problem had never been power—always control, containment. Well, no time like an emergency to try something new. “Er, well, hope we don’t die. Hold your breath,” he added when Derek started protesting. He put a hand on top of Derek’s head and shoved him under the water, then lifted his other hand.

White light blazed through the room, so bright he had to shut his eyes against his own magic.

The howling stopped, replaced by pained, outraged yowls.

Stiles curled his fingers in, imagining the light as boxes, like giant magical kitty carriers, closing around the lynx. 

The light burned against his eyelids, heating up the room, making the water almost sickly warm around them. It faded somewhat, so he chanced a peek, though he knew it’d worked. The spell had clicked, his magic surging in him as the spell became a part of him, memorized, created, real. 

The lynx were trapped in their shadow forms, misshapen blobs of gray in the center of glowing white boxes. 

Derek surged up with a gasp. “What the fuck, Stiles,” he snarled, before noticing the boxes. “What the fuck?” he repeated weakly.

“They’re stuck. Let’s go before something in the water tries to eat us.” He waded to the edge of the pool that didn’t have a lynx and hauled himself out. A bunch of gooey, off-color water came with him, turning the floor slick and brown. 

Derek crawled out beside him, shaking something off his boot. “I think there’s a locker room this way.”

Stiles looked up at him and bit back a laugh; there was some kind of plant matter tangled in his hair and trailing down his cheek. “You look like a sea monster.”

He rolled his eyes. “Come on, I think you swallowed some contaminated water.”

The locker room was virtually untouched, which meant there were plenty of towels to clean up with, and even a jug of water which they shamelessly used to wash off the muck. It was worth it not to be covered in…whatever that was. 

Derek broke open one of the lockers. “There’s clothes,” he called while Stiles was wiping off his boots in vain.

Stiles tossed the filthy towel aside and ran to where he was. He and Derek were wrapped in only towels, having abandoned their disgusting clothes by the door. If they had to, they were prepared to walk back to the fourth floor in just the towels, although it wouldn’t be ideal. When he reached him, Derek had opened several lockers, forming a pile of clothing on the bench behind him. “Oh my god, _jeans_.” Stiles snagged a pair to check the size, only to be disappointed when they were several sizes too big.

“There’s more, we’ll find something for both of us.”

They did—there was a surprising amount of clothing in the lockers, which gave Stiles a nauseating idea of what was in the bottom of that pool, but the lure of basically clean, if dusty, possibly worn, clothes was too much to pass up.

“Thanks,” Stiles said as he pulled a thin, long sleeved blue shirt over his head. 

Derek nodded; he’d turned away to get dressed in the clothes he’d found for himself, so he couldn’t see it when Stiles made a face at him.

“So,” he said, rolling his eyes, “I’m thinking we soak our boots in soap and water, borrow some of these Nikes, and let them dry overnight to get rid of the bog stench.”

“Sounds good to me.” Derek turned, then frowned. “What soap?”

Stiles pointed at the sinks, where the soap dispensers were still half full, and Derek beamed. 

Washing out their boots took about ten minutes, Stiles was estimating, but it was worth it to get rid of whatever had managed to seep into them. As an added bonus, there were a few sealed water bottles left in the vending machine near the door, which Derek simply punched the glass out of. 

As they made their way back up to the third floor, Stiles said, “Lynx and killer possums aside, this place is kinda great.” His whole body felt raw from the impact with the water, but they had clean clothes, bottled water, and mattresses upstairs in a closed in room. He was almost wondering when the other shoe would drop; they’d been having a lot of luck, considering they were nomads in a post-apocalyptic hell-scape full of magicked, mutant animals. 

Derek nodded glumly. “I’d suggest staying a few days, but Laura doesn’t like delaying any longer than we have to in order to sleep.”

“I see.”

The other three were still fast asleep when they got back to the room, which was both a relief and a concern, a problem they would just have to wait for morning to deal with. 

Derek and Stiles looked at each other, then grabbed the closest free mattress and dragged it to the door. Stiles snagged his blanket from where it’d fallen and climbed onto the mattress, looking up at Derek with his back against the door.

Either he was too tired to care or he knew what Stiles was thinking, because he didn’t question him or make a face, he just flopped on the bed beside him. He braced his back against the door, too, and closed his eyes.

Stiles stretched the blanket over both of them and tipped his head back to close his own eyes, suddenly exhausted. He smiled when Derek leaned slightly against his shoulder, a barely there weight and warmth.


	9. Chapter 9

They made it out of the city a day and a half later, having to creep around cars as slowly as they could. The problem was the expanse of woods, sprawling right in the middle of where the highway used to be. Beyond that was a mountain, huge and imposing and _solid_.

“That was _not_ there before,” John insisted. “I know this route, I know this road, it goes all the way to Riverview, there’s no way that was there.”

Peter eyed him like he was insane, which was the best way to encourage a geography lesson. 

Laura held a hand up as if sensing it. “The trees probably sprang up after the bombs, they grow really fast now. And the mountain…” She glanced at Derek, who shrugged. “They, um. Move. Kind of.”

“Excuse me,” Stiles said in a modulated tone of baffled politeness that he didn’t even know he possessed, “what the fuck does that mean?”

Laura shrugged, looking awkward. “Yeah, they move sometimes. I don’t know how or why. It’ll probably be gone tomorrow, or by the time we make it through the woods.”

John shook his head. “That’s…”

“Impossible,” Stiles muttered.

Peter scoffed.

Stiles glared at him. “Got something to add there?”

Peter managed such a dismissive, _oh please_ expression that spoken words would’ve been overkill anyway. 

“I don’t care if it’s _normal_ now, that doesn’t make it less _insane._ ” Stiles couldn’t wrap his brain around it; mountains weren’t supposed to move, they were supposed to be there in the distance, in the same place every time you looked, a solid, distant presence. 

John nodded slowly. He didn’t look away from the mountain for a long, tense moment, like he was trying to stare it into submission.

When it did not disappear, Laura said, “Okay, let’s get moving.” 

Stiles watched the mountain as they walked down the hill toward the trees, half convinced that Laura was confused, that the mountain had simply formed after the bombs had dropped. It was possible; the landscape had certainly changed in other drastic ways, a mountain wouldn’t be a stretch. A mountain that moved at will, however, was harder to swallow.

It took a few minutes to notice the fog as it rolled in, thick and low to the ground, obscuring their path, but when they did, Laura muttered a curse under her breath. 

A raven croaked; a pair of them were flying above them, circling overhead as they walked. They were keeping pace with the group, swooping low enough to make eerily intelligent eye contact every few steps.

“They’ve never been aggressive before,” Laura said when John asked if they should be careful.

The fog thickened, flowing between trees and over the ground until they had to slow their pace so they wouldn’t walk into any trees, though Stiles did manage to trip over several roots and rocks anyway. 

Derek and Peter took turns catching him before he could eat dirt, which was both nice of them and hilarious on the occasions they managed to catch an arm each and yank him off his feet in the other direction.

“This is ridiculous,” Laura muttered, navigating carefully around some thorny bushes. 

The ravens croaked and landed on branches above their heads, watching them. They didn’t look all that different than they had before but, then, Stiles had always considered them somewhat magical already, so he wasn’t surprised they hadn’t changed. 

“It’s getting dark, too,” John said after another few minutes of fumbling around in the fog. “Let’s make camp and spend some time making a plan for what to do if the mountain hasn’t, er, _moved_ by the time we reach it.”

Laura stared ahead, her mouth drawn down, eyes filled with longing. She sighed. “Alright, that’s a good idea,” she murmured. 

John seemed to realize she was feeling dejected. “Derek, Stiles, why don’t you go find some water? Take Peter with you.”

Peter bared fangs at him.

“Should we leave our things?”

“Yeah, we’ll keep an eye on everything.”

Derek, Stiles, and a reluctant Peter took three empty jugs and split off from where they’d decided to make camp.

It was so quiet, like the fog was muffling everything; even the ravens had gone silent. Stiles felt like his ears were going to start bleeding. “So…were you into Star Wars before the bombs?”

Derek looked at him, brows lifted. “Uh…a little. I guess.”

“Uh-huh. How much is a little?”

“I can name all the main characters and I’ve seen at least two of them more than once.”

“Alright,” Stiles decided. “That’s acceptable.”

Derek snorted, but he was smiling a little, too. “How many horror movies did you see before?”

“Horror?”

“Monster movies, specifically.” Derek smirked at him. “Godzilla, King Kong, Anaconda, Primeval, Lake Placid…”

“Those…I’ve seen Godzilla and King Kong.” He tipped his head. “And Pacific Rim.”

Derek nodded. “I’ll allow it.”

“Oh, gee, thanks.” He cast him a sidelong glance. “So…giant monsters destroying civilization was your thing?” he asked doubtfully.

“Well, no. I just thought they were outlandish and entertaining.” Derek waved a hand at the trees. “Obviously I didn’t think I’d be _living_ one of them.”

Stiles laughed. “I think you mean all of them.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Peter made a show of rolling his eyes and wandered off to the left, into the fog.

“What’s his problem?”

“He always did like books more than movies.” Derek shrugged. “Maybe we bored him.”

“Maybe.” Stiles swung his water jug lightly as they walked in the direction Peter had gone. The fog was thinning somewhat, leaving behind a biting chill, but at least they could see where they were walking again. Stiles crossed his arms, wishing he’d thought to put on another layer before they’d left their bags behind. He glanced at Derek, but he didn’t seem bothered, facing ahead with his arms at his sides, jacket open. He looked away. He needed to find time—alone—to practice garden magic. He hadn’t gotten a chance in the city, but now that they were no longer surrounded by unstable explosives, he should get back to it. As friendly as they were all getting, the real reason the Hales were keeping Stiles and John around was Stiles’s supposed ability to grow crops. He should keep that in mind while he was growing attached to them.

“You lived in Beacon Hills with Sheriff Stilinski, right?” Derek asked.

“Yes…”

He frowned. “I don’t remember you.” 

“I had a small group of friends I stuck to.” Stiles frowned down at his feet, struggling against the sudden wave of grief.

Derek just nodded, staying quiet as if he could tell Stiles was upset.

The ravens appeared again as they walked, hopping from branch to branch to keep up with them.

Stiles smiled when one of them croaked loudly and swooped off its branch, then jumped when it landed on his shoulder. He felt soft feathers brush his cheek and his vision faded out. Flashes of white and gray, icy, biting cold seizing his muscles, a whip of sharp wind stealing his breath. Dread, heavy and sickening, settled in his stomach, followed by fear cutting like a knife. He frantically cast out his senses, searching for anyone, anything, but he just felt cold nothingness, fear, danger-

His knees gave out as the raven fluttered away.

Derek caught him under the elbows, keeping him from falling. “Are you okay?”

He nodded blindly, still trying to catch his breath.

Derek backed him up slowly until they reached a tree, then lowered him to sit so he could lean against it. He sat beside him quietly, waiting until he stopped shaking.

“Sorry,” Stiles said at last. He rubbed his arms and looked up at the ravens, who were watching them. He sniffed and rubbed the end of his nose on his sleeve. “I just got dizzy,” he mumbled.

Derek looked like he didn’t believe him, but kindly didn’t say so. “Let’s sit for a few minutes.”

“Thanks.” He crossed his legs and rested his hands on his knees, breathing deeply for a minute. “Why, um, why do you guys want to go north so badly?”

Derek glanced at him, then away. “ _Laura_ wants to go north,” he sighed. “I never wanted to, I just agreed because she was so hopeful.” He shrugged. “I just wanted to help Peter and find somewhere safe to hunker down.” 

Stiles nodded—that lined up with what he’d observed about them already. 

“But Laura thinks we should go somewhere far away from other people, and I guess I don’t blame her.”

“Why?”

He shrugged again. “The first few years were rough,” he said quietly. “Trying to survive, it was…hard. It made people into monsters just trying to get an edge on each other.” His gaze was distant, like he was remembering. “So I get why she _wants_ to go, but I don’t trust the people we met that claimed it was livable there.”

Stiles nodded. “I feel the same way,” he muttered.

Derek glanced at him skeptically.

“You didn’t make a first great impression.”

He laughed a little, ducking his head and nearly setting it on Stiles’s shoulder. When he glanced up, they were nearly nose to nose; his breath hitched and he ran his tongue over his bottom lip absently, staring into Stiles’s eyes. 

He almost leaned in—what would it hurt? It would be nice, probably, and be comforting for a short time—but he hesitated as he felt the warmth of Derek’s breath on his lips. _Bad idea, bad time._

Derek pulled away quickly, looking startled and flushed. 

Stiles rubbed his face and turned away, taking a few even breaths. 

Next to him, Derek tensed; Peter stepped out from behind their tree and whapped Derek’s shoulder with his full water jug, knocking him forward.

“Ow! Why?”

Peter snickered.

Derek rolled his eyes and stood, grabbing his and Stiles’s empty jugs. “Show us,” he ordered, sounding annoyed. 

Peter grinned, all teeth and gleaming red eyes.

They returned to Laura and John with full water jugs from a creek Peter had discovered just a few yards from where Stiles and Derek had stopped. Laura and John had set up a fire and had gotten the food out, so they all could eat together. Stiles picked at his orange slices while attempting to purify the water, slightly apart from the rest of the group. 

Bizzy’s water purification spell was simple, but still different from what Stiles’s magic usually did. He managed it after a few tries, fingers dancing over the lids of the jugs. He grinned when he felt the click of the spell going right, the relief as his magic tracked the path of it.

Lines of light slid serpentine through the water, connecting at the bottom and flashing bright orange before fading.

He took a drink to test it, half expecting that stale, fishy taste of creek water. He was relieved to find it tasted like any other purified water he’d had. “Water is good,” he announced, moving the jugs off to the side and joining the rest by the fire. He sat beside John, rubbing his hands together to warm them up.

Laura was eating from her own jar with a dejected slump to her shoulders, staring into the fire with a somewhat blank expression.

Stiles felt guilty looking at her, so he turned his attention to Derek, across from him on the other side of the fire; he was talking to Peter and Stiles suddenly, desperately wanted to know what they were talking about. Or Derek, anyway—Peter wasn’t speaking, but he was responding in his own way. He smiled and knocked into Derek’s shoulder as Stiles watched, friendly and familiar. 

Stiles swallowed his last orange slice whole and went to his bag, digging around for the Book of Shadows that had fallen near the bottom. He sat cross-legged and flipped through the pages blindly, not sure what he was looking for. He couldn’t practice garden magic while everyone was awake without giving away the fact that he couldn’t _do_ garden magic. He stopped in a section labeled ‘Other’, the ink gleaming like it’d just been written.

There were two pages of recipes for toothpaste, three dedicated to food recipes, and one for making a toothbrush. None of them required magic, which Stiles guessed was why they were labeled ‘Other’. He was definitely going to try the toothpaste ones. The last thing they needed were painful, infected teeth. He looked up when someone walked past him, casting a shadow over his page; John was stepping away from the group. “Where are you going?” he asked, alarmed.

“I’ll be right back.”

He frowned. “Want me to come with?”

“I can manage.” He didn’t look back.

Stiles frowned more, then scowled when Derek snickered. “What?”

“Your dad thinks you hover too much,” Laura said. “He’s muttering.”

“Yeah, okay.” He raised his voice. “I’ll remember that for the next nuclear apocalypse!”

“You do that, son!”

Derek and Peter laughed.

Stiles rolled his eyes and flipped back to the front of the book. He could study the spells until he had time to practice them, see if he could memorize the useful ones, though he knew it wouldn’t do him much good if he couldn’t get practical practice.

If things went well for them up north, he’d probably start his own Book of Shadows over again, record his made spells and the ones he’d learned. It was good to record them, both for his own sake and anyone else’s. If he died and never wrote down the spells he’d created, no one else would be able to use them.

Not, he thought with a sigh, that it’d done anyone any good before. The collective had failed because they’d gone on the offensive, and they hadn’t really saved anyone, had they? Supernaturals had survived, sure, but at what cost? Nothing much was left, no society, dangerous animals, hostile nature. Sharing magic was supposed to make them stronger, the collective was supposed to be to protect everyone. Not this.

Stiles ran his thumb mindlessly over the words on the page. Maybe he’d be able to trade spells eventually, like he and Bizzy had done. He had plenty that would be useful in such a dangerous world. He thought about it, about the comfort and safety of making a home, and received an icy jolt of dread straight to the gut. Snow seemed to blow across his vision, partially obscuring everyone for just a brief moment before disappearing, leaving him cold. He pressed his fist to his sternum and wondered if it was an omen or paranoia causing these visions.


	10. Chapter 10

_Stiles walked surefooted through the trees, warm green and familiar, lush with life. He and Scott weren’t supposed to be in the preserve, but the lure of adventure and nature both were too much to pass up. Stiles wanted to collect leaves and bark and some of the dirt from the deepest parts of the preserve. He’d had a dream that he’d made a potion with those ingredients and now he_ needed _to try it. His mother always said that if a spell or potion came to him in dreams or otherwise, he should give them a try, at least once. It’d been working for him so far._

_“Scott?” he called, turning a slow circle. He could have sworn Scott had been just ahead, hands in his pockets, waiting for Stiles in their usual meeting place beside a split tree trunk._

_A raven cawed softly, fluttering to land on a branch in front of Stiles. “Dangerous.”_

_“What’s dangerous?”_

_“The woods. Get out of the woods.”_

_Stiles shook his head. “But Scott-”_

_“Dead. Leave the woods.”_

Stiles jerked awake, his heart racing in his throat. He sat up quickly, looking around.

It was nearly sunrise, the sky touched faint pink between the tree trunks, and everyone but Peter was asleep; John and Stiles had fallen asleep next to each other, slumped over almost exactly how they’d knock out on movie nights before, sans couch.

Peter was on watch, cross-legged by the remains of their campfire, watching Stiles with concern.

Stiles rubbed his face and shook his head a little. He had no idea what that dream was supposed to mean, if anything. 

Peter kicked Derek’s leg suddenly.

Derek woke with a grunt and swiped lazily at Peter’s face, claws leaving faint red marks.

Peter growled and shoved him over, making Derek snarl. 

The noise woke Laura, though she didn’t do more than stare sleepily at them wrestling for a long moment. She yawned and ran a hand through her hair. “Stop it,” she muttered, wedging a foot between Derek and Peter to pry them apart. “I swear, you guys still act like kids.”

Peter scoffed, though he looked less than mature with sticks and leaves tangled in his hair and stuck to his sweater.

Derek just looked grumpy, his eyes were still mostly closed, and when Laura stood to start packing up, he groaned and flopped back over.

Stiles laughed despite himself. 

They packed up, then ate, after Laura bravely accepted the task of waking John, which shaved about ten minutes off all of their lives. They all ate in silence—Stiles suspected all three of the Hales were in shock, John was _not_ a morning person—and then started walking for the day before the sun was fully up.

Stiles couldn’t help being creeped out as they walked, eyeing the trees like they were going to grab one of them up as soon as he looked away. It was dumb. They already _knew_ the woods were dangerous, so why worry about a dream that was probably just him stressing about the dangers around them? It wasn’t a vision or a warning. Just a nightmare.

It was cold out, sunny and bright, but windy too, brisk, so they all wore jackets and gloves courtesy of Bizzy and the meat the Hales had caught. Stiles was not expecting the apocalypse to be so chilly; movies and TV had prepared him for a blistering hot desert wasteland.

“Do you want some water?” Derek mumbled, falling in step next to him.

“Thanks.” He smiled, and they started talking to have something to do, to fill the silence. It was strange to watch Derek struggle to remember the details of a movie that to Stiles felt like it’d come out two weeks ago. “How old are you?” Stiles asked impulsively. 

Derek seemed to struggle for a moment. “Twenty-seven.”

“Oh,” he murmured. That meant Derek was seventeen before the bombs, while Stiles was…still is…twenty-one? How old was he? 

“What are you, nineteen?” Derek teased.

Stiles shook his head. “No, I…uh…I’m not really sure. I was twenty-one when the bombs dropped, which was too old to have known you by the way.”

Derek scoffed. “You haven’t aged,” he pointed out, helping Stiles over some extra large roots. “You still _look_ twenty-one.” 

“You just said nineteen.” He laughed when Derek shot him an exasperated look. “Okay, but the point is, technically it’s been thirty one years since I was born.”

“But you weren’t really aging or living for ten of them.” Derek eyed him from the side, his expression carefully neutral. 

“Right…” Stiles said slowly. “But I’m still thirty-one, technically, in terms of being-on-earth. Still older than you,” he added when he noticed Derek studying him. 

“Or since you were only experiencing life for twenty-one years and you haven’t physically aged for ten years, you’re still twenty-one and therefore _I’m_ the older one.”

“Ugh, my head hurts.”

“Plus,” Derek added quietly, “there’s a big difference in the gap between thirty-one and twenty-seven, and the gap of twenty-one and seventeen.”

Stiles eyed him. “We’re just talking about who’s the better, older one here, right?”

“Of course,” Derek scoffed, his cheeks flushing. 

Stiles rubbed his forehead. “Time travel is weird.”

“Is it time travel?” Derek wondered, and laughed when Stiles groaned noisily. 

Laura started walking backwards facing them. “Would you guys hurry up? You’re falling behind and slowing us down. We can be out of these woods by nightfall if we haul ass.”

John laughed. “Sorry, I just don’t see that happening.”

She scowled. “We can do it.”

Derek shot Stiles a _look_ before speeding up.

Stiles huffed and hurried to catch up with them. A sharp breeze blew through, carrying the sound of a raven’s croak. He whipped around, but he couldn’t see it, couldn’t see any birds in the trees or the air. A curled, browned leaf brushed down his cheek, sending shivers down his spine

He rubbed his arms and turned back around, lengthening his stride to catch up.

Peter had paused to wait for him, arms crossed like a disapproving parent.

“No need to be rude, I’m coming.” His boot caught on a root and pitched him forward into the dirt; he yelped as a stick jabbed his left palm.

Peter sighed and helped him up.

“This proves nothing,” he muttered, brushing leaves off his jacket. He looked up; the others were still walking, though John was looking back and slowing down, exasperated. 

Laura stumbled slightly, looking down at her boot in shock.

Something dark and furry popped out of the ground, latched onto her leg, and dragged her into a hole.

John lunged after her, but Derek caught him around the chest. “Don’t! There are spikes.”

Stiles and Peter raced over. “What do we do?” 

Laura’s roar echoed. 

The creature had come out of a spiky but camouflaged hole in the ground, almost like a trap door spider, only bigger, making strange squealing and snuffling growls as it moved deeper into the burrow.

“Follow the tunnel,” John ordered. “They’re moving, we need to follow it and dig her out before it can kill her.”

They ran together, following the muffled sounds of Laura’s vicious snarls and the creature’s growling. 

“It’s a hog,” Derek panted. “They aren’t poisonous so far but—here!” He dropped to his knees and started digging with his bare hands. 

Peter joined him, half shifting to rip at the hard packed dirt.

Stiles threw his gloves to the side and dropped down next to John to dig on the other side.

The ground bucked under them, snarls and thumps rising from beneath. The dirt started churning, the tunnel collapsing on either side of them as they dug. 

“What’s going on?” John demanded, but Derek just shook his head, digging harder. 

Stiles ripped up a root in his way and threw it aside, pulling at the dirt until his fingertips started bleeding.

Laura roared, muffled and demonic, and the ground started crumbling beneath them.

Peter grabbed Derek and Stiles by the collars and yanked them away.

Laura burst out of the ground where Derek and Peter had been digging, first her arms, then her head and shoulders, teeth bared as she freed herself. She got up on her knees, heaving for breath, caked in mud and fresh blood, her face scraped up and partially shifted. She was all but frothing with rage, breathing hard, eyes wheeling. Her leg was bleeding, her pants shredded from where the hog had grabbed her. She reached back into the hole she’d crawled out of and pulled the hog out, leaving a long trail of blood.

Stiles managed to close his mouth after a minute. “Um.”

She looked at him, wild eyed.

“Pretty badass,” he said, putting his hands up.

She lifted the hog. “Let’s cook it.”

Derek and Peter took care of preparing and cooking the hog while Laura got cleaned up. Stiles took the time to try to frantically learn the food preservation spell Bizzy had traded him. Thankfully, it was similar enough to shielding spells that he felt confident with it by the time the meat was cooking.

John was examining the hog’s burrow, the hole where it’d emerged to grab Laura, using a long branch to poke at the rough door it’d made somehow.

“After it’s done, we should get moving again.” Laura had her hands in her pockets when she returned from getting cleaned up. “We lost some time.”

“Barely,” Derek muttered. “Maybe you should sit down.”

She glared at him. “I don’t need to. We’ll get moving as soon as the meat is done.” She was still pale and limping slightly, like she hadn’t fully healed. 

Stiles stood and went over to John. “Find anything interesting?”

“Not really, except I can’t see an end to the tunnel, even past where it collapsed.” He handed his flashlight to Stiles and leaned further in.

“Uh, maybe don’t get so close. What if there’s more?” he demanded when John scoffed. 

“I doubt there are, or they’d have come to eat when Laura was down there.” He backed out anyway, standing and brushing leaves off his pants before taking his flashlight back.

“I hope there aren’t anymore,” Stiles muttered, looking ahead. What would happen if he or John got grabbed next time? Even if they managed to escape, they wouldn’t heal nearly as fast as Laura. 

“Me too. All the more reason to get out of the woods, right?”

“Yeah.” He went back to the fire and leaned against a tree. They’d cut up the meat, but it would still take some time to cook, which was clearly making Laura impatient.

They had some empty jars leftover from their fruit and vegetables, so John and Peter took them out to use for the meat. Whatever didn’t fit would have to be stored in something else. 

The first batch was the hardest to preserve, the unfamiliar spell fumbling from Stiles’s fingers like an unwieldy pen, but by the last one, he had it down pat.

“Great! Let’s go!” Laura chirped, stomping on the still-blazing fire.

“Stop!” Derek shoved her away. “We’ll put it out.” He looked at her like she was crazy.

“Whatever.” She stalked away, pacing impatiently.

He sighed and helped Peter pile dirt on the fire, then stamp it down to kill any leftover embers. 

Stiles split the meat between all of their bags, carefully not looking up. His shoulders felt tense, movements stiff.

“She’s just shaken up,” John said quietly to Derek. “That was close, she’s trying to calm down.” 

Derek nodded. “Yeah, I know.” He snatched his bag and slung it on, then eyed Laura’s like he was thinking about throwing it at her.

Stiles grabbed it after he’d put his own on and took it to her before Derek could do something that would start a fight. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked quietly as he handed it over.

“Yep! Let’s go.” She put the bag over her shoulders with her usual energy and clapped her hands. “We can eat lunch on the move and still make it, I think.”

John looked like he was going to say something, then sighed and shook his head. “Okay, Laura,” he said gently.

Laura’s expression went rigid, but apparently she couldn’t find a reason to say anything, so she started walking. 

They made sure to stay together this time, though that meant Laura had to slow down her long, quick stride somewhat. She was still pale and healing; Stiles saw her hands shaking when she took a drink from her water bottle.

Derek was walking close enough to her to bump into her several times, making her bare her teeth and grumble, but he wasn’t deterred. 

Apparently it ran in the family. “We’ve talked about this,” Stiles muttered when he knocked into Peter trying to get his gloves out of his back pocket. “Back up.”

Peter huffed and moved about a half foot away, hovering near John instead.

“Oh, thanks,” he said dryly while Peter sneered at him.

Laura pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, her steps faltering.

“You okay?” Derek caught her elbow.

She shook him off roughly. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a headache.”

Stiles looked at his dad, brows lifted. He’d never known werewolves could get headaches.

The troubled look on Derek’s face made him think maybe he hadn’t either.

Laura didn’t seem to notice their concern and kept walking, her spine stiff now, shoulders pulled back.

“Should we stop her?” Stiles whispered.

Derek shook his head helplessly. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Well, we better keep a close eye on her if we can’t get her to take a break,” John pointed out. “Come on.” He lengthened his stride to catch up to her.

Tension settled over the group again, heavy and stifling. Stiles watched Derek out of the corner of his eye. He and Laura had only had each other for so long, he had to imagine the idea of losing each other was terrifying. Maybe that was what was wrong with Laura. 

Stiles kept his thoughts to himself; Laura wasn’t in any mood to listen to reason or admit she was afraid.

“Okay,” John said firmly thirty minutes later when Laura had to grab a tree to stay upright. “We’re taking a break. I’m nearly fifty,” he added when she tried to argue, “I’m tired, I need a break, _respect your elders,_ pick your favorite and go with that.”

She glared at him, jaw flexing, but she was glistening with sweat and had a grayish pallor, eyes gleaming almost feverishly. “ _Fine,_ ” she said through her teeth. “Over there.” She pointed west and stalked away without waiting.

Peter sighed.

Stiles followed Laura first; the trees were thicker, closer together in this part of the woods, the leaves wider and heavier, blocking out the sun so effectively that it was like stepping physically from day to night. He looked around, fascinated despite himself by the bumpy green and yellow bark on the trees, and the cluster of deep blue, unnaturally smooth trees on the other side of them. He brushed his fingers over the blue bark, surprised by how cool it was, almost like stone. The leaves growing off the branches were small and white, gleaming like stars, sharp edged and clustered in threes. 

A lizard scurried up the side of the tree Stiles was touching, sparking like it was charged. 

Laura poked her head around the tree. “Don’t touch it,” she said flatly. 

Stiles snatched his hand back. He hadn’t been planning to touch it, but maybe being too close to it was also a danger.

John reached them first, followed closely by Peter and Derek. “Laura, why don’t you sit and have some water?”

She glowered and retreated to wherever she’d been before Stiles got to her.

Stiles rolled his eyes and followed her. “ _Hey_! Look, you can act as tough as you want, but something is clearly wrong and my dad is trying to help your ungrateful ass.”

She spun on him, baring her fangs.

He waggled his fingers. “Bring it. Maybe you’ll feel better.” 

Her fangs receded slowly, then her eyes dimmed and filled with tears. She whipped around, hiding her face. “I, um, I’m sorry. I just-” She took a deep breath and straightened. “I don’t like small spaces, and that’s the closest call I’ve had in a while. I’m going to need a few minutes.”

“Done.” Stiles hesitated. “Do you want everyone to stay away?”

She shook her head. “No, there’s a pond…I’ll be over there.”

Stiles beckoned for the others to come over.

The pond was small, ten feet wide and across at the most, and there were lily pads scattered over the surface, as well as weird, thick webs of some kind, glistening in the dim light, suspended over the water. A plume of smoke rose after a frog croaked.

“It’s interesting to you, isn’t it?” John asked quietly.

Stiles grimaced. “I know it’s dangerous and bad, but isn’t that an even _better_ reason to have a record of it all?”

“Maybe someday, kid.”

Stiles laughed dryly. ‘Someday’ sounded so strange; before, it was just a word that meant _later_ , not now but soon, and now it was the brass ring on the merry-go-round, a future, the idea of surviving long enough to have a _someday._ They’d been having good luck so far but Laura’s close call reminded them all that they were one mutated, clever animal away from death or serious injury at almost all times.

Laura was sitting at the edge of the pond, knees curled up to her chest, watching abnormally large, bright white and black dragonflies bob over the water.

Derek stepped around Stiles to go sit next to her, leaning his head on her shoulder.

Stiles glanced over at Peter after a moment, surprised that he hadn’t joined them, but Peter just watched, arms crossed almost defensively. 

He noticed Stiles’s gaze on him and shook his head, continuing to study Laura and Derek like he wasn’t sure of his own welcome.

Stiles knocked into John’s shoulder lightly, smiling when he knocked him back.

Laura let out a long, quiet sigh.

Peter growled suddenly, dropping his arms to bare his claws. 

“What?” John followed Peter’s gaze and swore. “Laura, Derek, why don’t you come back over to us?” His voice was even and calm, like he was speaking to a jumpy rookie.

Stiles flinched when he noticed the bear; it blended almost perfectly with the trees until he actually focused on it, and then it was like he couldn’t not see it.

The thing was huge, with six legs and a mouthful of overlarge teeth. It was snuffling at the small, red-dotted blue bushes that were growing on the side of the pond.

“Um,” he whispered, “should we maybe, uh, flee? There’s a bear.” He felt the need to point it out, since no one except Peter seemed to be having the usual reaction of Bear Nearby.

“Those ones usually just want berries,” Laura said quietly. “It’s okay. It’ll keep going.”

John had a hand on his gun, tense, but the bear didn’t seem to notice them.

After the bear had eaten all the berries off the bushes and moved on, Laura stood and brushed dirt off the back of her jeans, then pulled Derek to his feet. “Come on. Let’s see if we can make it out of the woods by tonight.”

Derek rolled his eyes, but the tension from earlier had dissipated, leaving a lighter cast on the whole group.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii, I'm posting early because I'm participating in the [Fandom Cares Black Lives Matter Silent Auction](https://fandomcares.tumblr.com/), and there's a lot going on, I put 3 possible fics up for bid and I'M EXCITED AND ANXIOUS, which is my normal state of being anyway.

Crows cawed overhead, swooping and soaring in a group like they were enjoying the cool, sunny day just as much as the rest of them. They were just behind the crows, tumbling out of the woods in high spirits mostly due to the weather, Stiles thought. It was just cool enough to be comfortable as they walked, sunny enough to brighten their moods. 

“Hey,” John said, “is that a farm?”

Stiles followed his gaze. “It looks like it.”

It was far away, big and rambling with broken fencing and dried out crop fields all around it. Stiles could see brightly colored sheep from where he stood, some cows meandering around, possibly a horse in the distance. 

“Should we go around it?” Derek asked.

Laura tilted her head, ears elongating. “I don’t hear anyone, but we’re pretty far away.” She tugged at her hair anxiously. “We’re getting low on food. It couldn’t hurt to check the place, right? We’ll get closer, see if we hear anyone. If it’s empty, we can search it for food and water.”

John nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

Peter harrumphed, but he didn’t resist when they all started walking.

The closer they got, the easier it became to see the damage the house had sustained, the caved in roof and half-collapsed porch, but it was big enough that some of it might have survived. The broken porch had flowers growing near it, shaped like dandelions but in all sorts of strange colors. There was a field of flowers to the left, Stiles noticed, strangely shaped, in colors he’d never seen, too big or small depending on the type of flower. 

Stiles eyed some herbs that were growing with the flowers, casting his senses out. He felt a ping of magic and got a little thrill. He’d need to do some experimenting, see how the magic had changed them, but he bet he could start making potions, balms, medicines, with some of the herbs. “I don’t sense any people in there,” he told the others. 

Laura nodded. “I don’t hear anyone.” She shrugged. “Let’s go in.”

John looked around. “Bet a place like this has a storm cellar or basement at least. Could be a place to sleep for the night.”

Laura looked automatically toward the sun, but it was already nearing the west. Not sunset, but close enough that if they left, they wouldn’t get far by nightfall. “Alright,” she sighed. “Good idea.”

Stiles frowned at the flowers and squinted. It was hard to tell in the full daylight, but it looked like there were glowing trails, hopping from flower to flower. He stopped walking abruptly. “Bees,” he said dumbly.

Derek stopped beside him. “Yes,” he said after a few seconds. “Bees.”

“They’re kinda big.”

“They don’t do anything as long as you don’t swat at them. If you follow their trails, sometimes they’ll lead you to food.”

“Huh.” Stiles watched for another second, fascinated, then made himself follow Laura and John.

Peter was, as usual, hovering, and followed him and Derek when they started walking.

The floor had some holes in it, wobbly floorboards making for a nerve-wracking trek through the house, but while the first floor was disappointing, the basement was, as John predicted, perfect. The walls and floor were made of cement, dug into the ground beneath the house, there were three separate rooms—bathroom, a small half-kitchen, and an open space with a king sized bed in the center—and there wasn’t any visible damage. There was a door that led to the side yard, bolted shut for the moment but excellent for a quick escape if necessary. 

Laura went to poke around the kitchen while the rest of them fanned out. 

Stiles found what he thought was a closet next to the kitchen, but turned out to be another bedroom, though it only had a twin sized bed and about three extra feet of space to open and close the door. 

“Hey, they have a well,” John called.

Stiles dropped his bag on the twin bed and poked his head out of the room. “Where?”

Laura pointed behind her, toward the open space bedroom; the door that led outside was hanging open.

Stiles and Peter went out and found John in the side yard, already cranking a hand pump into a dented metal bucket. “Let’s see if it was powered by electricity. I’m guessing not.” 

Stiles wrinkled his nose. “What if something died in it?”

“Then I guess you can purify it for us.” He gestured at Stiles to start cranking, leaning back to rub his arm.

Peter took over for him instead. Water began to flow in seconds.

Access to buckets of water gave everyone a chance to bathe, something Stiles realized after a second bucket was found and filled. He and Laura scrambled around for towels and soap while Derek and John hunted for more buckets and Peter kept the water going.

Stiles found a bathroom on the second floor with tons of products; two of the shower gels were still shrink wrapped. He eyed the floor, the cracked, peeling linoleum, and wondered if he could make it across without falling through it. The gel was on the floor by the far wall, tumbled out of a rack of broken, half-used, or empty bath products. 

He shrugged and went for it, walking along the side of the room rather than down the center, bracing his hands against the counters just in case it gave under him. The floor sank under his left foot about halfway there, making him freeze, heart hammering. Nothing collapsed.

He gulped and took another step, then another, and snatched both bottles. “Ha!” Prizes clutched firmly in hand, he started his retreat.

“Find anything?!” Laura shouted, making him flinch.

The floor gave out beneath his feet; he had just enough time to throw his arms out straight, catching himself with a jarring _thump_ that strained his shoulders painfully. His legs kicked automatically, panicked, but he managed to make himself stop. He was dangling with just his arms, head, and shoulders above the hole. “Uh,” he squeaked, “can I get some help?” He heard feet pounding up the stairs. “Be careful! The floor is-”

A crash shook the room, making the floor creak; a piece of it fell, nearly making him lose his grip.

Laura came in a moment later, red faced. “Are you okay?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“You almost killed me and you’re _laughing_?”

She shook her head, but she couldn’t get the breath to explain, collapsing in on herself as she laughed more. 

“Stiles?” Derek called from below. “Want me to catch you?”

Stiles glared at Laura. “I’d rather not fall, no offense, but your sister is no help.”

“Peter fell through the stairs.” She was nearly sobbing with laughter by that point, gripping the doorframe hard enough to splinter it. “He—he was running and put his foot through the wood—he tried to keep going-” She had to stop to catch her breath again, but Stiles got the picture.

“Hilarious, can you get me out of the floor please? It feels like my shoulders are about to dislocate.” Something solid pressed against the bottoms of his feet, giving him something to stand on, but he was too afraid to look down in case he lost his balance. “What’s that?”

“Me,” Derek grunted. “I found something to stand on. Laura,” he growled.

She wiped her eyes and fanned her face for a second. “Okay, okay, sorry. God.” She sniffled and finally took in Stiles’s situation. Her mouth twitched.

Stiles glared. “I swear I’m going to hex you.”

She stuck her tongue out and edged into the room, sticking to the wall like Stiles had. “Derek, start pushing him up.”

“Huh—what?” Too late; Derek grabbed his calves and shoved while Laura grabbed his shoulders and heaved. For a brief, terrifying moment, he was airborne, sure to hit the floor and crash through it.

Laura twisted at the last second and tossed him into the hallway. 

He landed hard on his ass and skidded several feet. “Ow!”

She grinned. “Shoulda just let Derek catch you.”

“I’ll remember that. I don’t think I’ll share my soap with you.” He clutched the bottles to his chest. 

She straightened up. “Wait, you found soap?”

He nodded. “But it’s only for people who didn’t leave me _literally hanging._ ” 

She narrowed her eyes. “Stiles, soap isn’t a joke, you-” She stepped toward him as she was speaking, and fell right through the floor. 

Stiles could understand why she’d laughed at Peter; it _was_ kind of funny. Or the apocalypse was giving them all a twisted sense of humor.

They all took turns bathing with dusty rags and the shower gel that Stiles generously shared, washing up as well as they could in the bathroom. Stiles scurried to the tiny bedroom to get dressed after he was done, shivering and longing for the days of hot showers and dryer-fresh towels. He shook his jeans out and eyed his other clothes. Now wouldn’t be a bad time to use that water to wash their clothes. It wasn’t a priority, but Stiles would feel better about things if he didn’t smell like stale sweat and moldering food, mud, and blood constantly. It was a morale thing.

He catalogued his various cuts and bruises as he dressed; most of them had come from his fall through the floor, some were from the hog burrow still, and others were mysterious gifts from life lived outside.

The door opened just as he was pulling his shirt on, making him startle. “Sorry,” Derek whispered.

Stiles turned to see him closing the door and lifted a brow.

“I just wanted to see if you were okay,” he offered, looking awkward. 

“Uh, yeah. Just a little bruised. What about Laura and Peter?”

“They’re fine, they already healed. Peter’s mad at Laura for laughing at him, so it should be nice and tense all night.”

Stiles nodded slowly. The tension in the room was pretty bad, too; Stiles felt it zinging along his skin and had to wonder what Derek was doing. Was he waiting or assessing? Was he hoping Stiles would initiate something or unsure if he should? Stiles wasn’t sure what he wanted. There was a lot happening and he didn’t know if he trusted Derek’s—or his own, for that matter—motives. 

It didn’t matter; one moment, Stiles was overthinking, and the next, he and Derek were kissing, a soft, hesitant thing, just the cautious press of lips from two people who weren’t sure what they wanted, abiding their mounting desire. Stiles pressed harder and Derek responded in kind, like they wanted to test each other for real.

Someone knocked on the door. “I’d like to get dressed at some point, boys,” John said dryly.

Stiles yanked back and winced as the mood shattered, possibly forever, considering _his father_ was outside the door _in a towel._ Ugh. “Yep, all done, just-” Ugh. He snatched his bag and jacket and pushed past both John and Derek. “Going outside, will try not to get eaten!” he shouted, stomping to the door. He found a clear, dry spot in the grass and tossed his backpack down, then sat. He had over a dozen cuts and scrapes, and a bottle of spray disinfectant, which was certain to be more painful than mortification. 

Peter joined him after a few minutes, sitting cross-legged two feet in front of him and watching what he was doing with interest.

“Thanks for trying to help earlier,” Stiles said after a minute. “Sorry you fell.”

Peter shrugged, turning his head to glare at the house.

Stiles snorted, picking up on his thoughts. “Yeah, she laughed at you, but talk about instant karma.”

He smirked.

Stiles hissed as he sprayed a particularly nasty cut on his forearm, riding out the sting with gritted teeth.

“What happened?” Derek asked over Stiles’s shoulder, making him jump.

He tilted his head back to glare at him. “Don’t sneak up like that. And I fell through the floor, _hello_ , I thought you were there. No super healing,” he added when Derek continued to frown. 

His expression cleared. “Ah.” He reached over Stiles’s shoulder to grab one of the alcohol swabs by Stiles’s knee and ripped it open. After a second, Stiles jumped when it pressed cold to the back of his neck. “You were missing spots,” he said defensively when Stiles snapped at him.

Peter scoffed and stood, wandering back to the house.

“…Thanks,” Stiles muttered. 

Derek just kept cleaning the cuts Stiles couldn’t see. “Your dad suggested we stay here for a couple days.”

Stiles snorted. “And Laura blew a gasket?”

“Actually, she agreed.” 

Stiles twisted to look at him. “Really?”

He nodded. “She said we’ll probably make better time if we rest up, though I’m guessing she only said that so she can use this as a reason not to stop in a week or so.”

“That sounds more like her,” Stiles said wearily. He put the cap back on the Neosporin spray and repacked his bag. “Thanks for your help.”

Derek nodded and stood back so Stiles could get up, then walked with him back to the house.

They split up the beds as evenly as possible—John was given the twin bed as the oldest with the weakest back, although his outraged response to that was epic—and the rest of them played a vigorous tournament of rock-paper-scissors for the king bed. Laura and Derek won, leaving Stiles and Peter to make do with blankets and pillows on the floor. It was better than the dirt ground by a mile, so Stiles slept deeply.

So deeply that he woke up first, abruptly and with no idea why. A glance to his left showed that Peter had moved closer during the night, not really invading his space but within arms’ reach at least. Stiles knew the Hales basically slept in a pile when they were outside and wondered sleepily why Peter hadn’t just joined them on the bed. 

He sat up, rubbing gunk from his eyes, and noticed Laura and Derek, sprawled out like drunks blown over in the wind, fighting for space even while unconscious. He shook his head and yawned, reaching for his water bottle.

After munching on some of his last bits of strawberry, he grabbed his jacket and one of the empty buckets they’d used for water the day before. He wanted to collect some of the herbs and flowers, see if he could make use of them, while they were here. He hadn’t seen flowers or herbs since Laura and Derek had woken them, and he didn’t know how long they’d last or when he’d see more. Would they bloom for a couple days and die? Last forever? Wilt if they were disturbed? All he knew was that they were right outside and he had to try. He couldn’t grow them himself, but he knew how to use them to make useful things.

He crept out the door and closed it securely behind him. The last thing he needed was to accidentally let a mutant rat into the house or something while everyone was sleeping. He’d only made it about six yards from the door when it opened again.

Derek stood in the doorway, frowning at him. “Where are you going?”

“Flowers.” He turned away and started walking, hoping Derek would just go back inside. The sun was barely up, and he’d already proven that he was not a morning person.

Derek caught up to him a minute later. “What do you mean, _flowers_?”

Stiles pointed at the field. “We’ll run out of medicine soon, but I can use some of those to make things.” He was pretty good with potions, too, which was why he was confident enough to try experimenting with strange plants.

“Huh. Humans did that, too.”

“Well, yeah. There were some plants that were just useful mixed together. I’m looking for ones with a magical hum; they can be turned into potions and medicine even if humans couldn’t have done it.” 

“Oh.” He didn’t say anything else until they got to the field of flowers. “Um…”

It was chilly out, and early, but the bees were busy bopping from flower to flower, leaving their glowing trails. Up close, Stiles could see they each had a different color, some in different shades of the same gold, others in vibrant pink or green. The flowers, though…they caught Stiles’s attention and wouldn’t let go.

There were tulips that gleamed like glass, sunflowers with clear, feather-soft petals, and dahlias with razor sharp edges. Rose bushes exploded out of the ground, thorns reaching out like grasping tentacles; daffodils soared overhead and daisies waved in a nonexistent breeze by their ankles.

“What are you looking for? I can help,” Derek offered.

Stiles could barely tear his eyes away from the flowers all around them. “Um. Herbs.” He shook his head and blinked, trying to focus. “Hang on.” He reached down and dug his fingertips into the cold, hard dirt, sending magic through it. The earth stung him back, his magic feeling like an attack, but his spell worked. “The ones I need will be glowing orange.” He shook his hand, but there was no visible wound, just a phantom sting.

“Oh.” Derek eyed the plants. “Okay. Um, be careful, some of them are sharp.”

Stiles nodded.

They worked in silence for a while, even though Stiles got excited and started muttering to himself about his finds. There were plenty of herbs and nearly all of them were humming with unfamiliar magic. The mint, for instance, was giving off a lower pitch of magic than Stiles was used to, but it still felt useful, just in a different way. He wondered if the magic-bomb collision had done that, then caught himself. Of course it had, that was why everything was like this. Of course, that was also why there was life at all; the magic had stopped the bombs from destroying all life, just…not as well as the collective had hoped. They couldn’t have predicted…this. Stiles touched his fingertips to a glass-like tulip, surprised to find it soft beneath his fingers. 

Derek brought an armload of half-crushed, scraggly herbs to him, dumping them into the bucket. “Should I get more?”

“No, this and what I have is enough, we don’t need to wipe the place out.” He dropped the mint leaves in the bucket and looked up in time to bang noses with Derek; he reared back, clutching his face and laughing.

Derek looked mortified. “Sorry! Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine.” He grabbed Derek’s shirt and yanked him in for a kiss, their mouths meeting with a much softer click. He pulled away after a few seconds, turning his head to sigh into Derek’s shoulder. “This probably isn’t a good idea.”

“Probably not,” Derek agreed, catching Stiles’s chin to kiss him again.

It took a surprising amount of willpower to pull away and get back on task. Stiles managed and, feeling awkward, began to talk in depth about the toothpaste he was going to make for them.

Derek listened and didn’t make faces while they made their way back to the house, which was really the best Stiles could ask for.

“—and, anyway, we can make toothbrushes from sticks or even just find some, probably.” He eyed one of the second floor windows. “A place like this might have bulk packs, if they lived in the middle of nowhere. They had a ton of soap,” he pointed out defensively.

“Wishful thinking.”

Stiles _hmph_ ed. “Fine. Use a twig.”

“You’ll have to as well.”

He was about to respond when movement caught his eye; he looked up, distracted, and froze in place. “What is it?”

“A horse.”

Stiles sputtered indignantly. “That is _not_ a horse!” He wasn’t exactly a ranch hand, but he’d seen horses on TV; this thing was the general height of an African elephant with a golden coat and a long, thick, spiked tail that looked distinctly reptilian. 

As it wandered closer, Stiles could see spatters of scales mixed in with its regular coat. It was on a part of the crop field that was burned and dead. 

“Should we run?” he wheezed. 

Derek shook his head. “Watch.”

Stiles watched, tense and ready to bolt. Then his jaw dropped.

As the horse walked, the ground healed under its hooves, leaving healthy, rich brown soil and lush grass in its wake.

“That’s probably why there are flowers here,” Derek said, sounding satisfied. “There aren’t really all that many horses around, but when you see them, they’re doing this, somehow.”

Stiles watched, awestruck, as the horse left a trail of healed earth behind it. “That’s…incredibly useful,” he mused.

Derek nodded. “But they have pretty sharp teeth and they’re fast, so I’m pretty sure people don’t really…use them.”

Stiles shrugged jerkily. “I was just thinking you could have one on a farm, you know, so that you could grow stuff without magic. It might work. You’d have to befriend the horse, though.”

“Yeah.”

Stiles eyed it. He wasn’t sure he trusted something that much bigger than him, but the horse wasn’t paying them any attention, apparently intent to follow some path in its mind. 

John and Laura were outside, panicked, when they reached the house. John whacked Stiles upside the head. “ _Tell_ someone if you’re leaving the house!”

“I told Derek.” He grinned weakly. “Sorry. I thought you all could use the sleep.”

John sighed, shaking his head and walking back inside as he muttered to himself.

Laura pointed at Derek. “Just go inside. Peter and I are going to catch one of those cows so we can eat breakfast.” She glanced at Stiles. “We found a fire pit if you want to get it started so we can use it to cook.”

“Sure.” He set his bucket against the house, ignoring the strange look she gave him, and hurried over to where she was pointing. 

The fire pit was in what had probably been a backyard, surrounded by broken chairs and cracked pavement. Stiles found a pile of fire wood and shrugged; it was also damaged and maybe rotting, but it would still burn…probably.

Once the fire was going—hissing and popping, maybe the wood _was_ bad—Stiles went to get his backpack from the house.

Derek and John were awkwardly occupying the tiny table in the kitchen area when Stiles went in. He caught John’s eye and looked away swiftly, grabbing his bag and hefting it outside. He’d saved all of the empty jars as they ate through their traded goods for this exact purpose. He rinsed them at the hand pump, just in case, then took them and his bucket to the fire. He made a clear space for himself and sat down, crossing his legs as he began picking through the bucket. He sorted the herbs by the hums they gave off, keeping a mental list of what he planned to use them for. Most of the balms would only really be useful to himself and John for sore muscles, cuts, bruises, various injuries, but the potions could be used for so much more. He could make smoke screens, make them invisible for a brief time, even bottle shields just in case he couldn’t get to any of the others in time. 

The whole process would be easier if he had the proper tools—a pestle and mortar, for starters—but a rock and a slightly bigger rock would have to do.

Derek and John joined him mid-mash; John was carrying a cast iron frying pan, which made Stiles laugh.

“Where are you going, there, Rapunzel?”

He rolled his eyes. “Thought our food might taste better on this than over an open flame.”

“Ah. Where are they, anyway? Surely the cows didn't outrun them.” He looked up at Derek, still mashing his mint and ginger together. 

Derek cocked his head, shifting his ears far enough that they grew tufts of black fur. He laughed. “They’re on their way. Laura had a…mishap.”

Peter returned first, cheerfully hauling what was once a cow, drained, skinned, and cut up. He looked _way_ too happy, and they all saw why a moment later, when Laura stumbled into view. 

She was covered in mud and blood, with all sorts of leaves and grass stuck to her. “ _Peter,_ ” she snarled. 

“What happened?” John demanded. He looked almost as horrified as he had the day Scott had broken his arm trying to keep up with Stiles while chasing “zombies” in the fourth grade. 

“He dumped the cow’s-” Her gaze cut to Stiles. “He did it on purpose,” she said after a second of hesitation.

“Well,” Stiles said fairly, “you did laugh at him when he fell through the stairs.”

“He was fine!”

“His leg was broken!”

Peter nodded, just a little too smug for Stiles’s liking.

He made a face at him. “This is still gross, and she already fell through the floor, wasn’t that revenge enough?”

“No,” Laura growled. “Because he’s always got to one up everyone, isn’t that right, _uncle?_ ” 

His face shut down and he turned away, toward the fire, shoulders rigid.

Derek stared between them, looking nervous. “Here, Laura,” he said quietly, “I’ll help you clean up.” 

Stiles grimaced at Peter, who was still just staring into the fire. 

John waited a beat, then sighed. “Here, Peter, let’s start cooking that. There are skewers we can use, too.”

Laura and Derek returned while they were cooking the meat, blood free and looking far less bad-tempered.

Stiles pointed at the pile of Hostess snacks he’d pulled out of his bag. “Breakfast?” 

Laura made a face, but she took a Twinkie and sat beside him. “What’re you making?”

“Toothpaste, among other things.” When she asked him to elaborate, he did while still crushing the mint; she seemed genuinely interested, which was pretty flattering. 

Derek joined them and took a cupcake, eating it with his fingers while he was listening to Stiles explain the potions he had in mind. There were quite a few that Stiles could make even with just his little pile of herbs, so he had plenty to talk about. 

A little later, when Derek and Stiles slipped away from the group to get water, they snuck desperate, gasping kisses out of sight, flavored with sugar and crumbly stale cake.


	12. Chapter 12

The temperature began dropping daily, with unpredictable heat waves that made everything constantly wet and soggy from melted snow. Laura took that as a sign that they were getting close to whatever destination she had in mind—Stiles suspected it used to be Canada but state and county lines meant nothing now—and became blindingly cheerful. 

“We’ll build a nice big house so we can all have our own rooms,” she chattered as they made their way down a basically deserted suburban street. Most of the houses were leveled and some were smoking, so they didn’t bother looking for supplies. “We’ll make pens for livestock, too, and maybe Stiles can learn to make clothes! But before then, well, humans did it without magic, we can, too.”

John looked amused by her rambling, and even Derek was smiling a little. 

Stiles tried not to visibly grimace. He’d been practicing during his watch almost nightly, but he couldn’t get a handle on garden magic. He’d tried growing something two nights ago and had instead created a six inch hole in the dirt. Things were getting dire, but at this point, with or without the Hales, Stiles _needed_ to learn garden magic. 

Derek bumped their shoulders together so casually it might’ve been an accident, except he was smiling and ducked his head a little when Stiles looked at him. He’d been noticeably cheerful, too, but if Laura had noticed, she hadn’t said anything about it.

Peter had _definitely_ noticed; he was hovering around them a lot more. Not like he wanted to keep them apart, really, more like he wanted to supervise them somewhat, which was both annoying and endearing, like he thought of Derek as a teenager still.

Stiles was trying to figure out how old _he_ was, technically, so he didn’t really have time to wonder about the rest of them. He was the one who’d been technically frozen in time. “Ugh,” he muttered, rubbing his forehead. 

“You okay?” John slowed to walk beside him. 

“Uh-huh, just giving myself a headache.” He looked around, hoping to spot a distraction. “Too bad none of these houses are still standing. We could’ve made camp for the night.”

“Ha. Like Laura would stop right now.”

She was practically jogging about twenty feet ahead of the rest of them, kicking jovially at piles of broken asphalt the way people kicked at rain puddles. 

Stiles’s mouth twisted. “I just don’t understand what she thinks she’s going to find when we get “up north”. What makes her this optimistic?”

“I think it has more to do with having a goal than what could be waiting,” John said carefully. “I think having something to work toward, somewhere to go, is what keeps her going.” He lowered his voice. “And I think, no matter _what_ we find when we get there, good or bad, she’s going to be disappointed.”

“Why do you say that?” Guilt made his cheeks flush; obviously it was him. They couldn’t grow anything without a witch to help. He would be no help, he would let them all down. 

“Because when she reaches her ‘goal’, she won’t have anything to chase anymore, and Laura strikes me as the type who feels like if she keeps moving, everything will be okay.”

Stiles looked at her again; she did hate stopping. Being on the move was probably her way of not dealing with the fall out of what’d happened. He could relate.

Peter was watching them with a strangely sad expression; he must’ve been listening.

“Well,” Stiles said awkwardly, “we won’t know until we get there, right?”

“Uh-huh.” John side-eyed him. “How’s your book coming?”

He tried to hide his wince. “Not great.” He shrugged. “Working on it. I almost-” His heart jolted painfully as his left foot came down on nothing, and then he was tumbling down rough asphalt and metal rods. He hit the bottom with a splash on his side and laid there, confused, for a second while his clothes soaked up filthy water.

Something sharp pierced his right calf and he yelped, kicking out and sitting up. A spiny, red fish circled him, then another. They weren’t that big, but they obviously had sharp teeth and were not afraid to use them.

He looked around; he was at the bottom of a pretty deep crater in the road that must’ve filled with water after some rain. There were chunks of asphalt jutting out of the water in the center; another sharp nip to his leg sent him scrambling for them, ignoring the aches from his jostled body. He climbed up, pulling his legs away, and saw there were at least seven of the fish, which were now circling his tiny island.

“Stiles,” John snapped. “Are you okay?” He sounded annoyed, like he’d repeated himself already, which he might’ve—Stiles was preoccupied.

“Yeah,” he called back, looking up. “Just scrapes. Uh…” He must’ve been six or seven feet down, which would explain the pipes sticking out of the sides of the pit. 

Laura and Derek ran up to the edge and peered down; Derek looked angry, although that might’ve been Stiles’s angle. 

Peter ran past all of them, right up to the edge of the pit, until Stiles thought he was going to fall in, too, and promptly bounced back like he’d run into something. He snarled and threw himself back at the wall.

“Stop!” Laura held a hand out and put her head back, apparently searching the sky.

Stiles followed her gaze, mystified, and spotted a trio of crows circling overhead. 

Laura snarled.

“What?” John asked. “What is it?”

Peter growled like an idling engine, practically vibrating, his claws resting up against the invisible wall.

“Crows,” Laura said through her teeth. “They create force fields sometimes.”

Stiles looked back at the birds and, on a whim, cast his senses. He ignored the tangle of emotions from his group and focused on the birds.

They cawed as if laughing and fluttered down to perch above his head. It looked like they were sitting midair as they stared down at him. 

“What?” he demanded flatly.

“ _Fish!_ ” Their voices were an echo in his head.

“Did you make this wall?”

They cawed and this time he _did_ hear laughter. 

“Are you talking to the birds?” John called hesitantly. 

Stiles looked at him and shrugged. “I guess. They’re answering me, so why not?”

John looked like he had an issue with that answer, but Laura spoke before he could say so.

“So what do they want?” Laura demanded. “And can you use magic to get out?”

Stiles’s gaze shot up to the birds.

“ _You can try,_ ” they said slyly, with a tone that suggested it wouldn’t go well if he did.

“I don’t think so.” He looked at the water. “They want the fish. I guess they can’t kill them on their own.”

“ _Teeth,_ ” they replied sagely. 

Stiles sighed, but it wasn’t like there was anywhere the fish could go anyway, they’d probably die or kill each other for food soon. He popped the knuckles on his right hand and held it out, letting the spell light a path through his mind, hopping from one fish to the next, targeting them. He shivered and the water lit up, flashing bright blue-white for a second.

The fish corpses floated to the surface a moment later. The crows cheered and drifted down; one landed on his shoulder to thank him directly in his ear before joining the other two.

Stiles looked away and saw Peter already trying to scramble down. “No, don’t. There’s nothing in the water now, I can climb on my own.” He rubbed his face and winced; his cheek throbbed under the pressure. He glanced back at the birds for a moment. _Dicks,_ he thought, wrinkling his nose.

“Watch your mouth,” one of them said…out loud. 

Laura’s jaw dropped. “ _What?_ ”

They didn’t speak, tearing apart their fish with vigor.

Stiles jumped off his island and waded through the dirty water. There were plenty of jutting rocks, metal pipes, and rods to grab onto, so the climb up wasn’t too bad. He got within a foot of the edge before Peter reached down and grabbed him by the handle of his backpack and hoisted him up. “Fucking assholes,” he muttered. “The birds,” he explained sheepishly when the others gaped at him.

Below, the crows laughed mockingly. 

John shook his head. “Come on, let’s get away from them, then we have to clean you up. Who knows what was in that water.”

“Nothing good,” Laura muttered, wrinkling her nose.

“Great,” Stiles groaned. He stood and saw Derek staring down into the pit, watching the crows eat the fish, and frowned.

Laura noticed and shrugged, going to his side. “Coming?”

“Hmm? Yeah.” He blinked and stepped back from the pit. 

They walked to a house at the end of the block that still had a front porch, sort of, where John made Stiles sit and hand over his first aid kit. As he washed and wiped Stiles’s various cuts, Laura prodded at the bites on his leg.

“I dunno, we haven’t encountered those fish before. Doesn’t smell like venom though,” she added when John whipped around. “I think they just had sharp teeth.” She took an alcohol swab from the kit next to Stiles’s hip and ripped it open.

The bites were neat and nearly went around to his shin; there was no bruising or weird coloration, just blood and redness from his punctured flesh. 

“Maybe they were trying to drink your blood,” Derek offered with an awkward half smile. He and Peter were hanging back playing lookouts, but Stiles figured it was also to keep him from feeling crowded. 

“Ha, yeah. That’d be my luck,” he mused, wincing as Laura began wrapping gauze around the bites.

“Sorry, is that too tight? I don’t really know how to do this.”

“No, it’s fine, just sore.” He was sore all over, really, just from the fall, and he was pretty sure he’d hit his face on the way down, which meant his cheek was sure to swell and bruise in a half hour, maybe less. 

“Well, other than the bites, everything else looks pretty minor.” John bent so they were eye to eye, checking his pupils. “Lucky you didn’t crack your head or break any bones.”

“Yeah, lucky.” What would they do in _that_ situation? There weren’t any hospitals, no way to cast his leg or arm. He was sure Peter still would’ve dragged his ass out, busted leg or not, but how would they walk if he had a broken leg? His gaze skipped to Laura, then Derek, as he wondered whether they would decide he was more trouble than he was worth at that point. He couldn’t blame them; he was only with them because he knew he and his father were safer in a group. It still hurt to think about, so he decided not to. He looked at Laura and grinned. “Didn’t you see that hole? You were way ahead of us.”

She looked insulted. “I was on the other side of the road! If I’d have seen it, I would have warned you, dork.” She stood and brushed off her jeans. “Do you need to rest?” she asked seriously.

“Nope, I’m good.” He felt John eyeing him and added, “If I sit still now, I’m probably gonna get all stiff, so I should keep walking.”

“Sure, son,” John snorted. “Whatever you say.” 

The air was still cold, enough that Stiles wished he’d have changed before they started walking again, although most of the stuff in his bag was probably wet anyway. The sun was still shining, though, so maybe he’d dry off before sunset.

Peter hovered, which made hiding his limp kind of difficult. 

Stiles glowered at him. “Yes, thanks very much for your help, you can go be proud of yourself somewhere else.”

Peter sighed and ruffled Stiles’s hair before wandering ahead to walk with Laura.

The pain in his leg eased, making him frown. Now Peter was making him feel guilty. Perfect.

“Are you in a lot of pain?” Derek asked quietly. 

“Oh, no. I’m fine.” He rubbed his cheek and winced. 

Derek nodded, but he didn’t look convinced.

The sun set earlier than they were expecting, or maybe they hadn’t noticed how long they’d been walking. Laura glared at the fading sunset like it was happening just to spite her.

Stiles leaned against a crumbling brick wall, taking weight off his right leg and sighing.

“We should probably stop for the night,” she grumbled, crossing her arms. 

“We can make it a little further,” Stiles said quickly. “It’s just barely dark.” 

She narrowed her eyes.

“We can at least try to find better cover than the sidewalk, right?” He gestured at where they’d stopped, the exposed area just down the street from a cluster of cars. Most of them had been set off in this area, but not all of them, and they couldn’t be sure an animal wouldn’t knock into them while they slept.

She sighed. “Yeah, probably.” She looked ahead. “Maybe a house or garage made it?”

“Maybe,” he chirped. “Let’s go.”

“What’s going on?” John lifted a brow when Stiles tried to say nothing.

“I just don’t want to stay out in the open, that’s all.” He looked into his father’s face and realized how tired he looked for the first time. They were all tired, but he was the only one pushing fifty and wandering around all day in drastic weather. 

He was also the only human, a fact that Stiles needed to remind himself of when he thought things were moving slowly. He needed to be paying more attention to his dad; worrying about him was the only reason they were alive right now anyway. 

“Are _you_ good?” he asked abruptly. “We can tell Laura you need to stop, are you tired? Having trouble breathing?”

John rolled his eyes. “Boy, do I look like I’m having trouble breathing to you? Trust me, you’ll know if I need to stop.”

Stiles glowered at him. “How’s that?”

“Because I’ll say “I need to stop”, and then, this is the important part, I will sit my ass down.”

“You are the most ungrateful-”

“Oh, pot, hello, it’s me, kettle.” 

Stiles threw his hands up and stomped ahead, grumbling under his breath when he heard John laughing behind him.

Laura lifted a brow at him. “So…we’re going?”

“Yep, apparently we’re just gonna walk until the old man collapses.” Stiles smiled sunnily at her.

There was a tall cluster of trees in the distance, and since they’d mostly had good luck camping under the cover of trees (trap door hogs notwithstanding), they headed that way as night fell. Since the only source of light was the moon, Stiles took the opportunity to look at the stars. The sight of them was comforting. He’d never been super into space or astronomy past the usual phase when he and Scott were nine, but something about the same stars and moon in the same sky after so much stunning change down here was reassuring. Living so close to cities meant he hadn’t gotten to see much of the night sky before. Once, he, Scott, Lydia, and the others had packed into two cars and had driven to the desert just to drink and stare at the sky for hours. They’d slept in the jeep and Boyd’s SUV and had woken up boiling and hungover. 

“What’s so funny?” Laura asked, knocking gently into his shoulder. 

He shook his head, still smiling a little. “Uh, nothing. Just thinking about poor planning and sunburn.” He stared ahead, willing away the unexpected tears that’d gathered in his eyes. They were gone. No point in dwelling right now.

Laura smiled quizzically but thankfully didn’t press; she likely knew from experience how random memories of people that were long gone could crop up.

The trees had cherry red bark and long, droopy brown leaves that tickled like feathers as they passed under them. 

The back of Stiles’s neck prickled as they entered the tree line. His ears hissed, a familiar enough feeling that it wasn’t until Laura mentioned it, annoyed, that he realized it wasn’t the silence pressing on his eardrums. 

“But what is it?” Derek looked around, eyes lighting up gold. 

Stiles moved closer to John and cast his senses, but he couldn’t find a source. Whatever the noise was, it was either too far away for him to sense or it wasn’t alive. 

“Just a suggestion,” John whispered, “but maybe we should keep moving.”

“Uh-huh, agreed,” Laura said hastily, looking over her shoulder. “Come on.” 

They walked in a tight group that reminded Stiles of penguins trekking across the ice, watching their surroundings with the hypervigilance of prey animals. Peter was hunched over, partially shifted which for him meant elongated ears and spikes protruding from his back, fangs, glowing red eyes, and a flat nose. 

Stiles’s fingers twitched. He recognized the sound, but he wasn’t sure how; he just knew it meant danger. He tried to think of a spell that would help if they were attacked, but if he didn’t know what was coming for them, he didn’t know what kind of spell to use. He eyed the trailing leaves of the trees and guessed fire would be a bad idea, though he had a particular affinity for it. Fire and destruction came to him easily. An uncontrollable forest fire would probably kill them before whatever was hissing. The sound felt like a warning, but for what? They crunched over the dried foliage underfoot as a group, shoulders knocking gently.

Derek lifted his head, nostrils flaring as he inhaled, gaze darting around; Laura took a deep breath too, and Peter sneezed, shaking his head. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, shoulders tensing.

“Smells like smoke.” Laura looked around at the trees, seeking out the source. Her mouth was drawn in a grim line, nerves sparking red in her eyes. 

Stiles huffed; he’d decided not to use fire and some other asshole had done it anyway. At least if he’d have started it, he’d know where it was.

“Like a campfire?” John asked warily, eyeing the dry brush around them. “Or bigger?”

“It’s just a little smoke, but if it’s in the distance…it could be big.” Laura crossed her arms, looking almost panicked. Her nose twitched, head turning slightly as if she was tracking it on the wind.

The trees around them began to thin, gradually growing apart until they stumbled into a wide clearing filled with dry, brown bushes and tall grass.

Stiles narrowed his eyes, scanning over the space. “I don’t see any light.”

Laura sniffed noisily, walking past him and frowning into space. 

“Should we go around? Skirt the trees in case we need cover?” John looked back at the tree line, then at the rest of the group.

Laura shook her head. “I don’t…”

Peter growled.

Stiles followed his gaze and squinted, then jumped when light flashed.

It was just a tiny spot of blue above the grass, followed by another a few feet away, and another. The fourth was directly atop the grass, which began smoldering immediately. 

Laura leaped back a foot. “Fireflies—back up.”

“But-”

She shoved Derek back several feet as the fire began to spread, following the tiny flashes of light from the insects, seeming to leap from bush to bush.

“Fireflies? Are you kidding?” Stiles couldn’t help leaning around her to see them. They were lighting up different colors—blue, red, yellow, purple, gold—and either the grass was spontaneously combusting at the same time they were flashing, or Laura was right and they were somehow starting the fires. “Didn’t this happen in a Disney movie once?” he muttered. 

“Probably. Running _away_ from the fire now,” John added, grabbing him by the upper arm and hauling him back.

The wind shifted, gusting hard over them and the clearing; the fire roared to life, embers drifting overhead as the flames danced toward the sky.

Laura swore, jerking Peter to a stop.

“Trees are catching.” Stiles clenched his fist and jerked his arm in toward his chest, pulling the air back toward him.

Some of the embers flickered and died, but three of the trees still caught, flames rushing up the leaves like racers off the mark, lighting up the night. 

“Run,” Laura said breathlessly. “We—we have to run.”

Stiles looked back at the clearing as the flames grew higher and nodded. The fire wasn’t out of control yet, but he couldn’t stop it with the wind fanning it like this, like they were working together on purpose. “Let’s go.”

They followed Laura and Peter, trusting their keener eyes and noses to get them out. The smoke was blowing west thankfully, and Laura was on a mission straight north that hadn’t wavered once since they’d met.

The fire was long behind them by the time they slowed; Stiles had fallen several feet behind, limping and breathing hard but too stubborn to say anything. Plus, the further they got from the arsonist fireflies, the better. They all reeked of smoke and sweat and, in Stiles’s case, stagnant rain water. 

“Are you okay?” Derek had finally noticed how far behind Stiles was.

“Fine,” he said airily. “Just slow.” He winced involuntarily as he put weight on his right leg.

“We can slow down now,” he said sharply, drawing attention from the others. 

“I’m _fine_ ,” Stiles insisted. “We have to keep going either way.”

“Yes, but we can slow down so we’re all together,” John pointed out. He’d already stopped walking to let Stiles catch up. 

Stiles didn’t have the breath to argue, which was frustrating; fall down one eight foot pit and his body betrayed him. Typical.

They trudged along all night. Stiles’s eyes burned almost as badly as the bite on his leg by the time dawn began to break, turning the sky dull, watery gray. He felt exhausted to his bones, legs trembling, eyelids heavy and bobbing. 

“I can carry your bag,” Derek offered hoarsely. He had deep shadows under his eyes.

“Nah.” Stiles managed a smile. “It’s keeping me from tipping forward on my face.”

He laughed weakly.

Stiles smiled again and felt a shock of awareness jolt his body awake, heart tripping in his chest and pumping adrenaline into his system. He cast his senses instinctively, feeling out John, Laura, then Peter, and finally Derek before soaring past them, past the blank quietness of the woods and to the concentration of energy to the west. 

A mile outside of the woods, grouped together like a settlement, was a coven of vampires. Twenty, thirty, a big enough number with hostile enough energy to set Stiles’s instincts on high alert, the back of his neck prickling. They were hungry and many, and Stiles did _not_ want to run into them.

“Hey.” He caught Laura’s wrist, fingers clamped tight as he shared his senses with her, let her feel what he felt; she didn’t understand, had never felt things like this through magic, like he had. 

“What is it?” She yanked free, scowling at him and looking unnerved. 

He blinked and shook his head. “Vampires, a lot of vampires, to the west,” he babbled. “ _Really_ close and very hungry. We need to get away.”

“They’re west?”

Stiles nodded at John and pointed in the direction he’d felt them in. “There’s at least twenty-five. I think that’s the hissing we heard; we were getting close. It was like a warning, I knew…” He rubbed his eyes, frustrated. 

“Then we should keep going,” Laura said. “We’ll pass them if we head north.”

“We’ll pass too close to them.” Stiles shook his head. “They’ll know we’re there and start a fight, and we don’t have the numbers _or_ energy to fight them.”

“We can go east,” John said simply. “Head north at an angle, avoid the vamps altogether.”

Laura scowled. “If we move north quickly enough, we can make it.”

“You’re putting all of us in danger,” John pointed out. “We’re all exhausted, and heading north east takes us out of the direct line of fire and we’ll still be heading north.”

“It’ll delay us.”

“Better delayed than dead.”

Her eyes narrowed as she straightened her shoulders. “We are heading north.”

Stiles tensed, looking between them; he’d already tried that route when he was a teenager, and he knew it was _not_ the way to victory. 

Peter stood at Stile’s shoulder while Derek looked on with an anxious expression. 

“We aren’t. We didn’t make it this far just to knowingly walk into danger.”

Laura set her jaw. “It’s not dangerous if we-”

“Yes it is, quite clearly, even if you think you can out run it.”

“I-”

“Okay!” Stiles stepped between them. “That’s enough, quit it!”

Laura bared her teeth.

“Let’s have a vote,” John suggested casually.

“ _Excuse me?_ ” Laura looked appalled. “We don’t _need_ a vote.”

Derek scoffed. “Alphas aren’t dictators, Laura.”

She flushed. “I—of course they aren’t, but I-” She sighed, shoulders slumping. “Fine,” she muttered. “We’ll have a vote.”

John nodded and looked at the rest of the group. “All in favor of heading east to avoid the group of hungry vampires?” He put his hand up.

Stiles’s shot in the air, followed by Peter’s.

Derek avoided everyone’s gazes. 

“And north?” Laura asked through her teeth, putting her hand up. She gaped when Derek didn’t follow suit. “You have to vote!”

“No, I don’t,” he muttered. “You already lost.”

She scowled. “ _Fine._ We’ll head east. But when we’re all exhausted from the extra travel time, you’ve only got yourselves to blame.”

John nodded. “That’s fine.” He didn’t bother gloating about his win.

Stiles watched Laura glower at Derek, who was still avoiding eye contact. It’d only been the two of them and kind of Peter for a decade. Of course Laura was used to Derek just going along with her plans. Stiles almost felt bad for her, because John was anything but a pushover. 

She’d just gotten her first dose of that, but certainly not the last. 

Stiles was surprised it’d taken this long for the two of them to butt heads over where to go. He looked over his shoulder, imagining the vampires, their hostility sharp and clear in his mind. It was good John had pushed, Laura would see that.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dont remember if I said this before but: Tuesdays and Saturdays are my posting days for this unless I randomly decide to post another day but those two for sure! 💛

John wiped his face and glanced at Stiles, managing a truly miserable smile. The temperature was soaring, the sun beating down on them from a cloudless blue sky. 

Stiles cast another shielding spell and felt the collective relief from his companions. The spells were the only things keeping them from roasting alive; the heat was so intense that Stiles could barely keep himself upright. The spells were taking a lot out of him, considering he had to cast them over a moving group, but it was the only way.

They’d been taking frequent, short breaks and sticking to trees whenever they could find them, but they were few and far between, given the dry, unrelenting heat.

Derek held out a water jug to Stiles, but he was too exhausted to bring it up to his mouth and didn’t want to drop it. “Let me help,” he said, and Stiles just let him tip the water into his mouth like a helpless infant.

“Thanks,” he rasped. 

There was a single tree ahead, tall and yellowed, that Laura was leading them to. They were all watching it, gazes locked on their prize, when, with a muffled crackle, the dry branches burst into flames. 

“Have I thanked you yet?” Laura asked breathlessly. “For keeping us from roasting alive? Because… _thank you._ ”

Stiles made a wheezing noise in response, concentrating too hard on the shield to answer. They could still feel the heat of the air while the shield was up, but the most dangerous aspects of direct, full scorching sun exposure were blocked. It didn’t help that Stiles couldn’t manipulate the weather even in a small area, or he’d have cooled their protective bubble down. As it was, he managed the bare minimum of keeping them alive and conscious. He was just trying not to pass out himself at this point. 

“Here. Seriously,” Derek growled, shoving the water jug in his face again. 

Stiles drank. He couldn’t protect them if he passed out from dehydration.

“Once we find some cover, we’ll stop,” Laura promised. Her hair was plastered down with sweat, eyes glassy. 

Even Peter looked worn down, pale and drenched in sweat, walking in an exhausted slump.

“Snake,” John warned dully. 

They followed his gaze with lazy disinterest; a big rattle snake was coiled up in the short, dry grass about five feet away, watching them with interest. It was facing them, tail lifted and rattling gently. The tip of its tail was sharp and curved above the rattler, almost like a scorpion.

Stiles stared at it, blinking, as the world seemed to go muted and quiet around him, ears filling with the sound of just the snake rattling. He let out a breath and swayed forward, soothed, and got shoved unceremoniously between the shoulders. He spun around, snarling.

Peter lifted a brow, unimpressed, and jerked his chin at John.

He was stumbling toward the snake, reaching out as if to grab it.

Stiles lunged, catching his arm and digging his heels into the dirt to keep him from getting closer to the snake. 

Laura caught them both and dragged them away. She didn’t speak as she pulled, brows furrowed in concentration.

Stiles bent over his knees as his head spun, eyes fluttering.

“You okay? Do you need water? Stiles?”

He shook his head. “I’m okay, just…need a second.” He swallowed with difficulty and pulled himself upright so he could refresh the shielding spell. Sweat rolled down his face and neck, stinging his eyes. He nearly tipped over as the spell settled, but managed to stay upright by some miracle. “Perfect. Let’s go.” 

John studied his face closely, but he was red and sweaty, too, so he couldn’t say much. “Alright.”

“We’re going to look for cover,” Laura said. “This is unbearable.” She stripped her shirt off, giving in, and stuffed it through the strap of her backpack so she didn’t have to carry it.

Derek had given up on his shirt a while ago, but Stiles and John had been holding out, hoping a breeze would come by and cool them off.

Peter whipped his own shirt off with a relieved sigh.

“Ugh,” John muttered, dropping his head back.

They were moving slowly; the heat was sapping their energy, leaving them at a shamble like it was sucking the life out of them and turning them into zombies. The grass was sparse and dry, scratching at their legs whenever they had to walk through it, and not a single one of them could muster up enough energy to care. 

Stiles wiped his face on his shirt, curling and uncurling his fingers with interest. He wished fervently for air conditioning, some shade, even one of those crappy box fans. Everything around them was a golden brown baked color, over-bright with barely any variation to let them know they were even moving, and after a while, he started to wonder if they were moving at all. When everything began to swim together in one brown blur, he dropped his head, concentrating on breathing and putting one foot in front of the other. The heat made his own skin feel too tight, like it was smothering him, like he needed to rip it off in layers to get some relief. He-

“Here.” Derek tapped the water jug against his lips again. “You don’t look so good.”

Stiles drank. “Yeah, none of us are looking great.” He wiped his face again and fortified the shield; a wave of exhaustion nearly toppled him, left him blinking and stumbling drunkenly. 

Derek caught his arm to keep him standing, but it was so hot that the contact felt like a punishment, so he shrugged him off with an irritable, muttered _thanks._

He tipped his head back, searching in vain for some clouds in the distance; streaks of light crisscrossed the blue expanse, like the contrails left by jets. They were red, like scars in the sky. “What’re those?” he muttered. 

Laura looked up. “Eagles.” She pointed.

 _Bald eagles_ , soaring across the sky and leaving red light trails in their wake. 

Stiles watched them until his eyes began to burn, then dropped his chin. One day, he thought drowsily. One day he’d catalogue and record all of these creatures and what they could do. 

“Everyone go left,” Laura ordered suddenly. 

No one had the energy to argue or question her; they simply veered to the left, trudging along like the heat-stricken mummies they were. 

Stiles couldn’t see. He blinked hard, swiveling his head, and realized they’d walked into the shade. 

Laura had spotted a cluster of trees and brought them to it. “That’s enough,” she sighed. “We’ll have to travel at night until it cools down. This is wasting too much energy, water, and general fluids.” 

John nodded breathlessly and went to a tree to sit against, dropping his bag with a thunk at his side.

Peter sprawled on his belly in the dirt, panting like an overheated dog, eyes closed. 

Stiles chose his own spot and sat down, glowering at the dirt between his feet. This was ridiculous. What kind of witch couldn’t cool the air down? He envisioned the spell Jana’s Book of Shadows described, each curve of the letters written in neat handwriting on stained paper. He could do it. He squeezed his eyes shut. _Just cool the air. Help cool everyone down._

The shade was helpful, of course, but there was no breeze, and the air itself was hot, like inhaling sand down his already abused throat. 

He flexed his fists and plucked at his magic, pushed and shoved, thought _do as I say_ and had the strangest sensation of falling. 

Stiles opened his eyes to Derek, Peter, and Laura fanning his face frantically while John dabbed his cheeks with a wet t-shirt. He was sprawled on his back, it seemed, staring up at the thick, waxy leaves of the trees behind the worried faces gathered around him. He made a face and batted weakly at John. “Stop wasting water,” he muttered. 

John pushed his hand away. “Stop trying to give us all heart attacks.” 

He laughed weakly. “Whoops.”

Laura frowned at him. “You need to take it easy.”

“Uh-huh.” His tongue felt thick and weird in his mouth, so he stopped trying to talk and sat up, swaying in place as his head spun in protest.

Derek thrust a water jug at him, scowling so it looked more like a threat than an offering. 

Stiles accepted. “Thanks,” he said meekly.

“Make sure you sip that, don’t chug,” John said sternly. 

“Uh-huh.” He sipped from the jug and stared straight ahead. He was dazed still and confused, drained. His limbs felt heavy, joints achy like he had the flu. He set the jug next to his leg and took the damp shirt John had been dabbing him with, setting it across the back of his neck. “Thank you.” 

John nodded and settled down within arms’ reach, obviously worried he would pass out again.

Stiles sipped more water, hoping it would clear the fog from his brain. It was ridiculous that he couldn’t cool the air around them; he couldn’t even really create ice, or he’d have been doing that from the start so they’d have water. He could freeze living things, could give frost bite and create sharp, frozen daggers, but domestic use? Icicles fired out of his hands at high speeds in the _best case._ He sighed and sipped from the jug again.

He couldn’t practice without giving himself time to recover or it’d end badly—knocking him out for longer, probably—so there was really nothing more he could do at this point. He _hated_ that. He was frustrated and tired and overheated, just like everyone else, and even with his magic, he couldn’t seem to do anything to make it better. He scooted back so he was leaning on a tree, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. He sipped water and dozed, overcome with lethargy. He woke with a snort when something screamed, throwing his hands up defensively. 

Peter loped back to the group, mostly human shaped but on all fours and with a long, spiny tail and a dead rabbit in his jaws. 

“Well,” Laura said tiredly, “at least someone’s got lunch.”

John laughed dryly, then groaned in disgust when Peter ripped into the rabbit raw.

Stiles flicked his gaze over their makeshift camp in a sort of daze, from where Derek was spread eagle near the biggest tree to Laura leaning up against the trunk closest to Stiles; Peter was directly in the center eating his rabbit. Stiles closed his eyes again and made himself take another sip of water, then shook his head, trying to dispel the ringing in his ears. 

It got louder.

His eyes snapped open and he gasped, lurching to his feet and backing up, pressing against the tree like he could slip through it. “Guys, there’s a—a wasp-”

John sighed heavily. “Stiles, if you leave it alone, it won’t—fucking shit,” he choked when he saw it hovering close to them, nearly over Peter and nearly as big as the eagles they’d seen flying overhead. 

Laura crouched, baring her fangs. “Peter,” she growled, “get over to Derek. Don’t run.”

Stiles braced himself to cast a shield spell, felt a surge of exhaustion so powerful it took him to his knees, shuddering. He knew if he killed it, one blast of fire or electricity, his magic would roar back to life like a stoked flame, but he had to muster the energy for the attack in the first place, and he wasn’t sure he could do that. 

John scrabbled at his bag and Stiles dazedly wondered if he was going to try to shoot it; he was a pretty good shot, but the wasp looked armored, gleaming black and bobbing closer to Peter, thin, spindly legs reaching out. 

Peter bared his fangs at the wasp, backing toward Derek and keeping his eyes on it. His tail lashed behind him, ears sharpening to points, fangs dropping.

It turned with him, buzzing noisily while its enormous wings fluttered. 

John ran to the spot Peter had left, within three feet of the wasp, directly in the middle of all of them, and threw a glass jar at the ground.

It shattered and a bubble of magic exploded, the shield surrounding them and throwing the wasp several feet away. 

“Jesus christ,” Stiles said, overloud, and after a pause, they all laughed, startled. Stiles waved his hands at them and dragged his bag to himself. “I’m taking a fucking nap.”

They rested until the sun went down, sipping water and trying to rehydrate. The wasp had drifted away after a while, apparently losing interest in them, which was good, because the shield wore away soon after. Stiles tried to create ice as they walked, cupping his palm and managing tiny, useless flurries that melted in seconds. 

He sighed, frustrated, when his next try didn’t produce anything at all. What was the point of having magic if he couldn’t even do the spells he needed most? He flicked his hands out in a moment of pure frustration and the tall grass in front of him frosted over. 

“Hey, good job!” Laura said brightly. “You’re getting it.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled. She was right, doing it on accident was getting closer to doing it on purpose, but it was still frustrating not being able to do it on command. 

“Hey,” Derek said sharply, “what are those?”

Laura turned and stiffened. 

There were figures in the distance, shadows in the dark, that were vaguely person-shaped, but…strange. They were walking jerkily, side-to-side gaits that looked wrong somehow, unsettling. They were slow, whatever they were, but there were a lot of them, all clustered together, like a single, many-limbed being.

“They smell…wrong,” Laura said slowly. “Rotten.”

The hair on the back of Stiles’s neck rose. “Like…dead?” he ventured, unnerved. 

“A little,” she admitted. “Maybe if we just…” She gestured to the left, and they began backing away as a group, deciding unanimously that no one wanted to take their eyes off the creatures. 

They made dry rustling noises as they moved and didn’t seem to be following them so much as simply moving in their general direction. Stiles wanted to shine a light on them but didn’t want to risk setting them off in case they were waiting for some visual cue to attack. It was unnerving not being able to clearly see what they were; Stiles glanced at Peter and Derek to his left and wondered if they could see the creatures. The moon was a bare sliver in the sky, casting the most infinitesimal amount of light, but they only needed a bit, from what he knew of werewolves. 

“Don’t run,” Laura ordered. “I don’t know if they can see us, but I don’t want them to chase us if they see us running.”

“They don’t seem very fast,” John murmured. “Maybe if we book it, we can outrun them?”

“No,” a voice Stiles did _not_ recognize said from behind them. “They’re pretty fast when they’re trying to catch you.”

Peter spun first, lunging and snapping his teeth at a woman no older than Derek, if that. 

She pointed a sword at his throat and backed up several steps. “Hey, let’s calm down, okay? I’m just trying to help.” She had dark smudges on her cheeks and forehead, her sword was stained with something dark, and she was smiling at them, from what Stiles could tell. 

Laura grabbed Peter’s arm and yanked him back. “Who’re you?”

The woman smiled wider, her teeth a white flash in the dark as she lowered her sword. “Kira. This is Rian.” She gestured behind her, where another, taller woman stood nearly invisible in the shadows. 

She stepped forward, close enough that Stiles could make out a red shirt and a long, brown braid laying over her shoulder, a suspicious look on her face, and bronze cuffs on her wrists. 

“Now,” Kira said, “if you promise no more fangs or claws, we can all go back somewhere safe.” She smiled again, weirdly cheery. 

Stiles didn’t trust any of it. “What are they?”

“Uh, you know. Things that got mutated by the bombs.” She looked over at Rian.

She pursed her lips. “They’re wasps. Are you coming or not?”

Laura looked back at the creatures. “Yeah, we’re coming.”

Stiles squinted at them, trying to make out any shapes that said _wasp_ to him; they didn’t look like the one they’d seen earlier. 

Kira and Rian led them through tall, dry wheat grass to a chain link fence that seemed to be blocking off an empty square of the same field. “It’s a storm cellar,” Kira chirped, opening the fence for everyone. “It’s been pretty useful. Oh,” she said, sniffing at Stiles. “Are you a witch?”

“Yes…” He leaned away from her. 

“I’m a kitsune,” she explained without seeming to notice she’d made him uncomfortable. “Rian is a siren, but she doesn’t ever sing anymore.”

Rian sighed. “Thank you for sharing, Kira.”

“What? It isn’t like they wouldn’t have figured it out. Oh, here’s the door.” She yanked it open with an unholy screech while Rian secured the fence.

Laura peered down into the cellar, then looked over the group and sighed.

“I’ll go down first,” Kira offered brightly. “I know where all the lights are.”

“ _Someone_ go down before they hear us,” Rian bit out, and Kira scrambled down the ladder. 

Laura followed her, then Derek, Stiles, John, Peter, and Rian, who pulled the door closed as she was climbing down.

The storm cellar was damp and chilly, deep enough underground that the sun hadn’t quite baked it throughout the day, and pitch dark; Stiles could barely see even when he made a light with his fingers. 

“We found this place almost a month ago,” Kira informed them cheerfully. Her voice was moving as she darted around the cellar, lighting dim lanterns one by one, exposing cement walls and floors. There were pallets of bottled water, shelving units of canned goods, dehydrated foods, and a door on the left wall, and four sets of bunkbeds set end to end on the right.

“Wow. Pretty nice.”

Rian stepped up to Stiles, nearly putting them nose-to-nose; she didn’t flinch when Peter growled. “It’s ours.” 

He didn’t blink. “We weren’t planning on taking it from you.”

Rian nodded. “Good.” She backed off enough for Stiles to see that while Peter had been growling, Derek had silently stepped up behind her, apparently ready to join in if it came to a fight.

“But we can share it for a little bit,” Kira said, darting over to them. “Right?” She shot Rian a stern look, though she was still wearing an optimistic smile under tired eyes. 

“Right,” Rian muttered, stalking away. She flopped onto the bottom bunk of the set furthest from the door, grabbing a bag from under the bed. 

“Great! Have some food, guys.”

“Thank you,” John said warmly, and Kira beamed.

“What were those things outside?” Laura asked. She was standing apart from the group as they got food, arms crossed and legs braced. “And _don’t_ tell me wasps,” she added. 

The air seemed to grow heavy with tension; Stiles glanced at Rian, but she’d rolled onto her side to face the wall.

Kira pursed her lips. “Well…we’re working on getting rid of them,” she said carefully. “We’ve been, umm, cleaning them up for a while.”

“Six months,” Rian said in a flat, toneless voice. 

Stiles was impressed by everyone able to keep track of days, since they all seemed to run together in a mush of exhaustion and walking for him, though he guessed they had an easier way to keep track of every twenty-eight to thirty days than him.

“But what _are_ they?” John pressed.

Kira swallowed nervously.

“Dangerous,” Rian said. “They’re dangerous.”

Kira twisted her hands in the hem of her torn shirt, the logo long faded. “You should stay with us tonight. To be safe.”

Laura looked over at John, who shrugged. “Alright. Thank you,” she said slowly. 

Stiles flinched a little when Derek pressed a bottle of water into his hands. “Oh, thanks.” He twisted it between his palms, anxious. They didn’t know these two; they could murder them in their sleep. 

Peter put a hand on Stiles’s shoulder, then Derek’s, then wandered over to the ladder and sat down, arms and legs crossed. 

“I guess he’s taking first watch,” Derek said, amused. 

“I guess.” Stiles looked at the bunk beds and felt himself tire on the spot, as if just imagining having a bed was enough for him. The mattresses were bare and obviously there were no pillows, but it wasn’t the ground, which made it one hundred percent better than anything he’d slept on for days. 

Derek caught his hand, making him twitch, and dragged him over to one of the beds. “Go to sleep. You’re still exhausted from earlier.”

He looked over at John and Laura, who were clearly just as nervous about this set up as he was, and decided he would sleep. He’d need to rest while he could if the temperature spiked again, to protect everyone else. They could handle the rest of the night without him. “Thanks,” he muttered, pulling away from Derek to climb into the bottom bunk. He grinned up at him. “I feel like a cave goblin.”

Derek snorted. “Go to sleep.” He slung his own bag on the top bunk.

Stiles couldn’t help darting a glance over at his father, who looked back at him with a bland expression. He managed an uncomfortable smile and decided to deal with any questions or smartass comments in the morning. He put his bag under his head and curled into a ball, not bothering to dig around for his blanket or anything. He slept like a rock.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad you guys are enjoying the world, I had a blast writing it! <3 Obviously, since there's a ton of action, what's not to like? X) I hope you're still enjoying the story!

Stiles’s first thought when he woke up was that he _needed_ to practice garden magic. It was an odd, urgent thought that he didn’t really understand as he drifted to consciousness. He opened his eyes and stared at wooden slats above him, the fabric of the top bunk mattress. They were just visible in the dim light that was coming from somewhere behind his head. He must have been having a bad dream. He rubbed his eyes; he could hear people talking, which either meant everyone was up before him or he hadn’t slept as long as he’d thought. Someone had covered him with a thin throw blanket while he was asleep. He rubbed it against his cheek and nose to block out the scent of the storm cellar, which smelled damp with the faint, lingering stench of rotten food. He guessed Kira and Rian had probably cleared out the old stuff when they got here. 

When Stiles turned his head, he saw Laura, John, Kira, and Rian sitting around a couple battery powered lanterns, talking in low voices. 

He grumbled to himself and rolled off his bed, keeping his head ducked until he was sure he was clear. 

Peter dropped to the floor in front of him, making him leap back with a shout.

“Don’t _do_ that!” he snapped. 

Peter looked smug as he held out two water bottles and a jar of the ginger mint toothpaste Stiles had made at the farm house. 

“Rude,” he muttered.

“You’re awake! Good morning,” Kira chirped. “Or afternoon, I guess. There’s a bathroom behind that pallet of water.”

“Uh-huh,” he said dubiously, imagining a bucket. A _used_ bucket. He’d probably be better off outside.

“There’s a private well,” John explained. “You’ll have to hand crank the water to the tank, but it’s pretty straightforward and it flushes.” 

“It runs on _rain water_ ,” Kira said. “It’s pretty interesting, I think the owner of this cellar designed it themselves.”

“Gotta love doomsday preppers,” Stiles mumbled, shuffling toward the bathroom. It was nice, dark, dank, but kind of like being in the twenty-first century again. It was great to brush his teeth over something other than the ground and not worry about wasting the last bit of drinking water. There was even a mirror over the odd little sink, though looking in it made him wince. His face was thin and dirty, covered in bruises and cuts and patchy facial hair. He scratched at it and longed for a razor. It might’ve offered some cover if it grew like Derek’s, even over his jaw, but as it was, it was just itchy and catching pieces of food and foliage. 

He sighed and used a bit of water to wipe his face, though the absence of dirt simply highlighted the tiny injuries, the cut along his jaw, the bruise next to his left eye, the scrape on his right cheekbone, another on his chin. “Ugh,” he muttered, leaving the bathroom.

John held a packet of jerky over his head as he was passing. “Lunch.”

“Thanks.” He went to sit by his bag that was still on the bed he’d slept on and frowned at the blanket, but couldn’t figure out whose it was.

Peter sat on the floor beside his bed, eating a pack of dried bananas, which looked frankly revolting although he seemed to be enjoying them.

Stiles felt more awake and lively after eating; he joined the group on the floor after he’d finished, sipping from a bottle of water.

“We corral the wasps into one big group and torch them,” Rian said. She was untangling her hair with her fingers, a canister of decade-old dry shampoo by her knee. “It’ll work.”

“Yeah, but it’ll make this place completely uninhabitable,” John told her. “The fire will spread, everything is dry and hot. You’d have to leave.”

“He’s right,” Kira said softly.

Rian scowled, yanking her fingers out of a stubborn knot in her hair. “I don’t know another way to get rid of them.” 

Stiles shook his head. “What are they?”

Kira sighed heavily. “People,” she said sadly, with a careful glance at Rian. “Or they were.”

Derek was above ground, standing at the fence and watching the creatures mill around. Stiles climbed up and saw them for the first time after his vision cleared enough to see in the blinding sunlight. 

They were old, gray, rotting bodies, shuffling unevenly around the fencing, their eyes, noses, ears, and lips gone, forming black hollows in their faces that made them look like unfinished puppets. 

“Zombies?” Stiles croaked, flinching when one of them turned slow and disjointedly toward them. 

“I thought that at first, too,” Kira said, patting his arm as she stepped up next to him. “But they’re really wasps, like we said.” She crossed her arms like she was cold, despite the breathtaking heat. “The big red wasps will sting the back of your neck and latch on. While you’re dying from the venom, it lays an egg in the wound, and…” She gestured at the bodies. “Rian calls them husks,” she said quietly, “because the wasp eats the insides first.”

Stiles shuddered. “How…and…why are they moving the bodies _around_ , though? Why not just eat them wherever they fell?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “Magic? The venom? We haven’t figured it out.”

Derek glanced at Stiles; he was flushed and sweaty from standing in the heat so long. “What do we do?”

Kira shook her head. “Burning was our best plan. We got rid of some by cutting their heads off and dropping them in water, but you have to hit at just the right spot and it isn’t like there are any large bodies of water around here to drown them in.” She pushed at her hair, which was coming out of her two braids. “Plus, there’s a lot of them now, at least thirty.” Her gaze flicked toward the group, her posture deflating.

Stiles looked over them; most of them were so decayed that he couldn’t imagine they would be recognizable to anyone, but they must have found out about the wasps and how they worked _somehow._ He looked over the…husks…with fresh eyes and wondered who Rian and Kira had known; was it the short girl wearing ripped red pants? The bald man with a broken jaw, the fit young woman with leaves tangled in patchy brown hair? “I wonder,” he said without thinking, “if I can create a sort of…reverse shield. So if we burn them, it can keep it contained.” 

Kira frowned, tilting her head. “Maybe…Would that be possible? Aren’t shields supposed to keep things out?”

Stiles picked at a scab on his left hand. “I’m not sure. I’d have to practice before we tried, I…” He glanced at Derek and away. “I’d need to practice to make sure I could do it without catching everything out here on fire, and we need to get all of them…together.”

“We can do that. If you piss them off, they’ll chase you. We could lure them.” She bounced on her toes nervously. “We’ve done it before.”

Stiles nodded. 

She eyed him. “Can you really make a force field to hold them all in? Including the fire?”

“I can try.” He shuffled his feet. “Like I said, I’ll need to practice. I’ve never done anything like this before, I’m not sure it’ll work. But it’s better than just lighting them up and us not being able to get out, right?”

Kira nodded. “Right.”

“Probably safer to practice down in the cellar,” Derek said. “In case it doesn’t work the first time.”

Stiles jostled him with his elbow. “Are you doubting me?”

“Only a little.” He smiled uneasily, like he wasn’t sure if Stiles was joking or not.

Kira jolted suddenly. “I have a candle we can use!” She scrambled back to the cellar.

Stiles followed more slowly, because he wouldn’t heal from a broken arm as quickly as the rest of them if he fell down the ladder. 

Kira’s candle was vanilla bean scented, set in a little glass jar that she presented to Stiles with great ceremony.

Rian was doubtful. “Aren’t shields for keeping things out, not in?” She hovered behind Stiles’s shoulder, watching his clear bubbles collapse in on themselves before ever making it around the lit candle. 

“Yes,” he said through his teeth. “That’s why I need practice. And space,” he added after a beat.

She shot him a look, then sighed. “Yeah, fine,” she muttered. “Sorry. How long—never mind.” She retreated to Kira’s side on the other end of the cellar, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall.

Stiles thought it was worse, somehow, now that they were all watching him from a distance, like an audience. He tried to ignore them, staring at the flickering candle flame. He held his hands out like a snake charmer and plucked the shield spell forward. It bloomed around the candle just as it was supposed to, but he couldn’t tell if it was working the way he wanted it to.

Derek approached. “Do you need help?”

He smiled. “Actually, yes. Can you feel any heat?”

He put his hands near the shield, right above the flame. “Yeah, I can feel it.” He winced.

Stiles huffed. “Balls.” He clenched his hands, collapsing the shield. “Alright, let’s try again.” He shook his hands and head, took a deep breath, and looked at the candle. He had multiple types of shields, but none that were meant for containment. He tried to imagine his sun screening shield turned inside out, the repellent part on the inside, when he put his hands out again.

The shield bloomed around the entire jar, glowing slightly with the flickering flame. 

He glanced up at Derek.

He put his hands out again. “No heat,” he said with a quick grin.

The shield faltered under his palms, then collapsed. 

Stiles pinched the bridge of his nose. “God.”

“You’ve almost got it,” Derek pointed out. “You’re getting close, and that was only your second try.” 

Stiles couldn’t agree. It was a simple spell, just reversed from how he normally did it, and it shouldn’t have been this hard. “One more time,” he muttered. 

Kira and Rian had given them a safe haven for the night; the least they could do was help them get rid of the husks outside. 

Derek straightened his shoulders like he was about to take a test, which was somehow endearing.

Stiles twisted his wrists to loosen them and put his hands out. He drew on his magic, calling up this inside out spell and telling it, _do as I say._ The shield bloomed again and felt steady, but it didn’t…it didn’t _click_ the way it should have.

“It looks like it’s working,” Derek observed. 

“Uh-huh.” Stiles put his own hand out. The heat was being contained, but the spell didn’t feel complete. 

“So it worked?” Rian asked, standing up. “We can do it?”

Stiles shook his head. “It doesn’t feel right.” He felt Laura and Derek staring at him and flushed, averting his gaze. 

“But you just did it. It worked.” 

He looked at the candle. “Barely.”

Kira looked between them. “Maybe we can get the wasps in a group and you can try putting the shield around them before we start the fire. Just to be sure?”

Stiles looked over at Derek, then Laura. They were watching him already, and he felt nervous, like they knew, like this would be the definitive proof they needed that he wasn’t the kind of witch they needed. “I…we can try,” he said at last. “But if I can’t get it to work, we’ll have to think of something else.”

“Fine.” Rian stalked over to the ladder, her boots striking the cement sharply with each step.

Kira, Rian, Peter, and Derek volunteered to gather the husks into a group while Laura, John, and Stiles stood back. “It’s kinda…loud,” Kira warned them. 

They’d moved a good distance from the cellar just in case, though Stiles kept insisting they weren’t going to start a fire unless he could hold the shield. He tried not to look at Laura when he said it. 

Kira tossed a rock at a group of husks, holding her sword at the ready. 

The buzzing was intense, a slow rising noise that made the hair on his arms stand up. It was louder than any insect he’d ever heard, and it was coming from the bodies. They turned as a group toward Kira and lunged at her, shuffling along on uneven, broken legs.

She was right; they were fast when they were riled. 

Rian had her own group of buzzing husks behind her. She ran slower than Kira, a downfall of not being a shifter, but her expression was set, determined, almost angry as she led them toward the spot they’d decided on.

Stiles inhaled sharply when one of them lurched at Derek, clumsy hands curled into claws that grasped at his shoulders, but he squirmed away at the last second. Stiles pretended not to see Laura looking at him. 

Peter almost looked like he was having fun, which was completely inappropriate and also kind of hilarious. John sighed noisily every time Peter let himself _almost_ get caught. 

“Ready?” Laura muttered as the four groups converged into a buzzing, uneven circle.

Stiles clenched his jaw. “I guess.” He braced, waiting for Derek and the others to get out of the way, that split second when the husks still hadn’t quite started chasing them yet, and flicked his hands. 

The shield gleamed in the sun overhead, like a monstrous bubble with a faint orange sheen. 

It didn’t feel right. Stiles flinched every time one of the husks bumped off of it, sending the surface rippling, and his hands twitched anxiously when Rian crept closer to it, inspecting the edges. 

“It worked!” Kira punched her fist into the air.

Stiles shook his head. “I don’t think so. Something doesn’t-”

Rian pulled a lighter out of her pocket, snatching a handful of the dry, waist-high grass to her left. 

Stiles ran. “Don’t! You’re going to burn everything, the shield isn’t working!” 

She glanced back at him as she lit the grass in her hand, lobbing it through the shield. The wall faltered as the burning grass dropped into the group of husks. The grass around them started catching piece by piece.

In the five seconds it’d taken for Stiles to reach Rian’s side, the shield had filled with smoke and flames that licked up the sides, sending cracks through it. He grabbed her arm. “It isn’t going to hold!”

She shook him off and lit more of the grass.

The shield shattered, letting the husks rush out as one.

Stiles backpedaled, nearly tripping over Peter, who must have followed him. “Go, go, go, the grass is catching.”

The fire spread out from the husks like a plague, charring it black in seconds and roaring to life as it fed on the dry grass. He could hear the crackling getting closer, the stench of smoke rising. They would be surrounded shortly. 

Kira ran past Stiles and Peter, toward the fire.

He turned automatically to stop her, but Peter grabbed his arm, yanking him back several steps.

Kira pulled Rian to her feet. “We have to go. Move!”

“He’s—in there,” Rian managed, choking on the smoke.

Kira looked over the group of slow-burning husks, both hands still wrapped around Rian’s upper arm. “He’s gone, Ri. Come on.” She heaved her to her feet. 

“Go,” John was yelling. “Get the bags.”

“Stay up here,” Laura ordered. “I can get them, you guys run.”

“Laura, no,” Derek snarled.

Stiles yanked out of Peter’s grasp and faced the fire. 

It was spreading fast, faster than he thought possible, leaping over dry grass like a living thing, gleeful and quick like a dancer. He threw his hands out; the dampening spell evaporated before it put even a dent in the flames. 

Someone’s hand clamped down on the back of his neck, hauling him nearly off his feet. He sucked in a breath and ended up choking on smoke, tripping over his own feet. 

A husk lunged out of the flames that were nearly as tall as it was, arms out stretched, bony fingers clawed. 

Stiles stamped his foot; the fire roared and engulfed it, dragging it back into the flames like the arms of hell retrieving an escaped soul.

Peter reached around and tied something tight over Stiles’s mouth and nose.

“Stop! You guys go.” He choked and bent over, blinking his stinging eyes hard. “You guys run, I can—I can stop this.”

Peter bent so they were eye-to-eye, mouth twisted up in a snarl.

Laura suddenly appeared from the smoke. “Guys, come on!” She shoved at Peter to get him moving.

“Take him and go!” Stiles pressed a fist to his chest, struggling to breathe. “I can do this, I can, I just need-” He turned as the heat at his back intensified. 

The flames were nearly as tall as he was now, spreading and eating up the dry grass greedily, twisting up and down in an intricate dance, bright and surreal. 

Stiles’s gaze caught on the flames. He’d always been good with fire, starting it, controlling it; his mother used to say he was like a fire himself and he’d never really understood that she was joking about his unending well of energy and determination until she was gone.

_It’s too big,_ he realized in a moment of clarity. He was exhausted, his power tapped out, but he could buy the others some time to get away. 

The fire had spread out in every direction, crawling up on the sides so they were surrounded, spreading out east and west, devouring the entire field. 

“Stiles!” Laura roared. “ _Now!_ ”

Why hadn’t she left yet? Taken her pack and run? They’d already lost the majority of their pack in a fire, why risk the rest of it? They were far enough away that they’d make it if they ran.

He spread his arms out at his sides, waited until a flame licked delicately at his inner arm, and brought them together in front of him. 

It pushed the flames back about six feet, a gap of blackened grass and smoldering earth.

He had only a moment to savor his victory before Peter hauled him over his shoulder and ran.

Stiles lifted his hands and hurled another dampening spell at the flames, struggled to contain it while Peter was running, but it wasn’t _working_. He couldn’t understand why, he’d always been able to manipulate fire, why was it failing him now? His vision faded in and out, to his fury, as his body finally realized how much smoke and how little air he’d been inhaling. 

Peter dumped him to the ground sometime later and stalked several feet away.

Stiles sat up and coughed over his knees, hacking and choking until he could finally draw in a breath. He looked up through streaming eyes to find everyone else. 

Laura was checking Derek over a few feet away while John paced nearby; Kira was passing out water bottles, covered in soot.

Rian was four feet to Stiles’s left, tears running down her face. She had a nasty burn up the side of her neck and most of her braid had burned away. 

Stiles turned away, glaring at his hands. What the hell was going on? Surely he wasn’t so pathetic that now he couldn’t even control _fire?_ He could destroy things, yes, and usually did, but he could also usually contain what he was destroying. He looked up, watching as Laura carefully peeled her shirt off a burn on her side, wincing. He blinked back tears. “I’m sorry,” he croaked. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it, I tried-”

John whirled on him, stomping over so quickly that Stiles jumped, automatically tipping back to get out of his path. “What were you thinking? Are you stupid, do you have a death wish?”

Stiles shook his head, a little alarmed at how furious his father looked. “No, I—I thought I could stop it, I usually-”

“Did it occur to you that after a full day of doing nonstop magic may have completely drained you? That you needed longer to recover? You could have gotten yourself killed, could have died, and then what?”

Stiles shook his head, swallowing thickly. “I just—I just wanted to protect everyone, it was spreading so fast.”

John paced away, covering his face with his arms. He dropped to his knees beside Stiles and grabbed him by the shoulders. “I can’t lose you, too,” he muttered, dragging him in for a fierce hug.

Stiles hugged him back and shivered, tears pricking his eyes again. “I’m sorry, I thought I could do it.”

“Well, just _don’t_ next time.” He leaned back and wiped his face, then looked over at Rian, jaw clenching.

“Dad…”

It didn’t matter; Laura got to her first. “You almost got _all_ of us killed! You had no right, Stiles told you to wait! That fire got completely out of control, we all almost died because of you.” She sliced her hand through the air when Kira tried to speak. “No. I already lost my pack to a fire once, and now this irresponsible, selfish adrenaline junkie almost did the same thing! Inexcusable,” she snarled. 

“Sorry,” Rian said quietly without lifting her head. She was still crying, but her expression wasn’t contrite or afraid—she looked relieved. 

“That was stupid and dangerous,” Kira told her sternly, even as she put herself between Rian and Laura. “But—you should know that Rian’s brother—he was in there, and—we’ve been trying to lay him to rest for months.” She frowned up at Laura, legs braced apart. “She did something selfish, but it wasn’t with intent to harm.” 

Stiles looked at Laura; she was still furious, but apparently decided they weren’t her problem, because she turned on him next. 

“You need to be more careful,” she snapped. “Peter and John nearly got burned going back for you, and I _did_ get burned.” She prodded the almost healed wound on her side.

Stiles nodded. “Thanks,” he added after a beat, and was rewarded with a small, begrudging smile.

“That was kind of cool, when you manipulated the fire to take the husk away.”

“I’m usually much better at that.”

She nodded slowly. “You should drink some water. We managed to get our bags and stuff, but the rest got left behind.”

Stiles looked.

Derek was standing by the pile of backpacks, which were bulging with whatever supplies Laura had stuffed into them while scrambling to get everything out before the fire reached the cellar. 

Stiles rubbed his face and finally noticed his left arm throbbing. The inside of his forearm had a burn, bright pink and shiny, the size of his palm. 

“Got any cream for that in your jars?”

Stiles looked up and winced. “Er, no. But there’s probably some in the first aid kit.”

John sighed and shook his head, walking over to Derek.

They were all sooty and sporting either burns or scrapes from trying to escape the fire, so traveling far right away just wasn’t an option, but they couldn’t stay where they’d stopped. For one thing, the fire was way too close still, and for another, they were right out in the open, where the sun was beating down on them already. 

They found some trees further away, where they stopped to treat burns, rehydrate, and eat. Stiles’s eyes continued to sting and water as the sun set, which was when Derek pointed out that they still weren’t that far from the still-raging fire. 

“It’s still burning.” He inhaled carefully. He looked haunted, like the smell was bringing back memories. 

Stiles winced because it probably was. He stared at his hands. Drained or not, he’d still failed; how was he supposed to protect anyone if he couldn’t contain a _fire_ of all things? The one thing he’d always been good at?

John knocked their elbows together. “Stop that.” His expression was stern.

Stiles made himself smile but it felt fake, wrong. He rubbed his eyes until the ghostly image of Lydia’s judgmental little smirk faded from his mind. She would have been all over him for not practicing that shield spell more. She was the most fascinated by his magic once everyone got over the initial shock; Lydia had helped him with new spells, had always been the first one he went to when he couldn’t get it right. He missed her. 

“Stiles?” Kira touched his knee. “Thank you for trying,” she said when he focused on her. “If you hadn’t bought us some time, I don’t think we’d have made it.” Then she smiled earnestly at him, reminding him painfully of Scott.

He smiled back. “Right,” he breathed. 

Laura looked calmer after eating, though she was keeping Peter and Derek close, like she thought they’d be snatched away if they wandered too far from her.

“So do you guys have a destination in mind?” Kira asked as she checked her bright green backpack. “Or are you just wandering?”

Laura hesitated, then shrugged. “We’re heading north.”

Kira and Rian shared a look.

“What?” Stiles demanded, instantly suspicious. 

“We’ve just heard that it’s cold,” Kira replied carefully. “Very, very cold.”

“Mmhm,” Laura said vaguely. She clearly thought Kira’s information was outdated. “Well, we’re going anyway. Nothing better to do, right?”

Kira relaxed and laughed. “Right.”

Laura studied her and sighed again. “You’re welcome to join us.” 

“Oh, I have to stay with Rian. I promised.”

Rian jerked her shoulders irritably. “You can go,” she muttered. 

“Don’t be silly,” Kira laughed. “We’re a team. And heading east,” she added pointedly. 

Laura watched them. “Well, if you ever head our way, you’d be welcome.” She actually seemed to mean it that time, though she clearly was only inviting Kira.

Stiles had to look away from Kira’s sunny smile, and he didn’t think he imagined the hitch in John’s breathing, either. It was a familiar smile.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your comments! I try to reply, but sometimes I don't really have words, I just used them all up in the story, so...sorry. I will continue to try to find new ways to say thank you so much it makes me so happy that people are enjoying my story. <3

Stiles scratched his nails through Derek’s hair, managing to grin against his mouth when it made him shudder. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, catching on a tiny cut that hadn’t quite healed yet before slipping in. The burn of ginger and mint had never been so appealing, and Stiles chased it eagerly, laughing when Derek caught his chin to return the favor.

They’d split up to look for supplies and had gotten distracted behind a busted up Dollar General, but Stiles didn’t feel too badly about it, since it looked like nothing had survived in the tiny town of Hpy Vlle or whatever the welcome sign used to say. 

Derek grunted and jerked away suddenly, clocking his head on the brick wall behind him.

Stiles muffled a laugh against his shoulder. “Are you okay?” he whispered. 

“Yeah but Peter’s coming around the corner.”

Stiles jumped away from him, making Derek laugh this time. He thumped his shoulder, scowling. “Not funny.”

Peter rounded the corner at a jog, like an excited Labrador. He noticed them and rolled his eyes, then held up the sealed roll of duct tape he’d found as he grew closer.

Stiles muffled a snort of laughter. “And here I thought that we wouldn’t find anything here. Awesome find.” 

Peter’s expression quite clearly said _don’t patronize me,_ which crumbled Derek’s resolve; he had to turn his back completely and cover his face. Peter scowled. 

Stiles elbowed Derek in the ribs and smiled at Peter. “I’m sure it’ll come in handy later.”

Derek gulped and turned back around. “Let’s go show Laura.” When Peter lifted a brow, he said, “We looked! There’s nothing left.”

Stiles avoided Peter’s gaze. They _had_ looked, but everything was broken or melted, so it hadn’t seemed necessary to climb over bricks and broken pipes to search more thoroughly. “C’mon.”

Something let out a chittering laugh; John swore.

Laura said, “What—oh my god.”

They ran to the busted up bakery next door where Laura and John had been searching for food.

There were three raccoons spread in a semicircle around the doorway, where Laura was blocking John with her body, flashing her eyes and posturing at the little monsters. 

One of them reared up and chittered, revealing that it had six legs rather than four. The noises it made were almost human; not quite words, but grunts and vowel sounds that were close enough to give Stiles chills.

Peter thrust the duct tape into Stiles’s hands.

“Wait, wait, are they dangerous?”

“Not any more than usual,” Derek muttered, despite Laura’s growling.

They were pretty big, though no bigger than the ones living the high life in apartment complexes. The legs and voices were still unnerving, dangerous or not.

Peter kicked his clothes off and shifted in a ripple, then ran toward them.

Laura braced herself, like she’d forgotten Peter was in control again, even in that form, before he lunged at the trio of raccoons, teeth snapping.

They shrieked but clearly didn’t want to give up their territory, skittering out of his reach but no further while waving their paws, fluffing their fur, and baring their teeth. 

Peter lowered his head between his shoulders and snarled, tail lashing like a whip.

Derek crossed his arms as Peter chased the raccoons across the busted-up parking lot. “I’m never going to get used to him looking like that.” 

Stiles snorted. “At least he has control.” He winced as Peter’s teeth snapped inches from a raccoon’s tail, making it scream in fear. 

Laura and John wandered over, watching Peter chase the raccoons. Laura put her hands on her hips and watched him go. “Lucky most of the cars have been activated over here already,” she muttered. 

Stiles’s heart skipped, gaze darting around, but the cars in the connected parking lot were all burned and blackened already, as Laura had said. He crossed his arms and followed Peter’s progress. 

The raccoons had climbed up the side of a building with their six legs carrying them faster than Peter could make up his mind about chasing them. 

“Peter!” Laura called. “Come on, they’re gone.” She sighed. “I guess this area’s a bust, anyway.”

“Tsk.” Stiles held up the duct tape. “Peter found this.”

She looked like she wanted to say leave it, but a glance toward where Peter was loping back to them stopped her. She sighed. “That’s great.”

Stiles put the tape in Peter’s bag while he was shifting back. 

“Okay, you get dressed. We’ll hole up in one of these stores if we have to,” Laura decided, eyeing the cloudy sky.

“I think we can make it.” John looked up, too.

Peter got dressed in a huff.

Stiles turned to Derek to ask if Peter had always been this opposed to jeans when someone laughed. He froze, his heart clenching hard in his chest. 

They laughed again and said…something, the voice a low murmur just out of his hearing range, but it was painfully familiar anyway. 

Stiles turned slowly, trying to track where it’d come from. “D-do you hear that?” 

Derek shook his head, looking concerned. 

“ _Does Lydia know about this?_ ”

He flinched, jaw clenching.

“ _Boyd said you were sick, are you okay? Do you want me to grab you anything on my way there?_ ”

“Stop!” He turned in a circle, breathing hard. 

“Stiles?” John put a hand on his shoulder, making him jump.

He shook him off. “I…there’s a…”

“ _I can fix it, but are you going to tell me how you did this to your phone?_ ”

It was Danny’s voice, plucked from his memory and brought out in the open, echoing around like a taunt. 

“ _You bring Scott, I’ve got the beer, and Lydia and Erica are bringing everyone else._ ” 

He stepped back from the group, shaking his head, tears pricking his eyes. “I—I have to-”

“Stiles, wait!” 

He couldn’t. He _had_ to check; it couldn’t have been Danny, it obviously couldn’t have been Danny, but he had to make sure. Danny was human, had only learned about Stiles’s magic in high school, so he had almost no chance of survival but…if there was even a paper thin chance, Stiles had to check. He heard the others chasing him but couldn’t make himself stop. 

These people, Danny, Scott, Lydia, Erica, Boyd, they’d been his family, cobbled together through a variety of incidents and meetings that seemed like the pluckings of fate; Stiles always insisted he’d felt a _click_ the way he did with a new spell when he met each of them. 

“ _Do you know what Erica’s doing? She’s finally asking Boyd out, I told you that she’d do it in the spring._ ” 

Stiles shook his head, plugging his ears briefly, but he could still hear Danny’s phantom gloating. 

He’d always been good at predicting things, almost to the date. 

Stiles skidded around a corner and nearly ran into a guy around his age, pale, with strawberry blond hair and glassy green eyes. He lifted his hands, panicked. 

The guy threw his hands up, too. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. 

“Why did you do that?” Stiles demanded, his voice shaking. “Why—why did you have to-”

The man shook his head. “I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t know you were a witch. Back up.” He backed up himself, tripping over his own feet. He looked sickly, pale and sweaty like he was feverish. “Witches are too susceptible to my aura, you—you have to back up, it isn’t safe.”

Stiles shook his head, too upset and confused to understand the implications of what the man was saying. 

Derek and Laura caught up first, half-shifted and snarling. 

Stiles blinked and finally realized. “You’re an incubus?” he guessed. 

The man nodded. 

Derek bared his teeth and growled, the sound rising from deep within his chest. 

He shot him a terrified look. “But not—not _sex_ , it’s—I’m asexual, I don’t-” He shook his head frantically, backing up more until he was nearly at the next building. 

Stiles set a hand on Derek’s arm. “What do you feed on?” he asked, his voice steadier, his heart rate slowing. He looked at the incubus. 

He was trembling almost as much as Stiles was. “Affection. Really, it’s not-”

Laura looked sympathetic. “How do you feed?”

“Just, um, just time, closeness—comradery.” He swallowed audibly. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, but my—it’s louder to witches, so…I’m sorry.” 

Laura glanced at Derek, then Stiles. “Would having a meal with us help?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Maybe, but...” He looked at Stiles nervously, then away, licking the sweat beading on his upper lip. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” 

Derek finally relaxed. “You should join us.”

He still looked uncomfortable. “It might…” He flicked a glance at Stiles. “It might hurt him.” 

“Not if you don’t sit right next to me, right? There are other people around.” 

He frowned. “Okay. Thank you,” he mumbled. 

“Okay! Come with us. What’s your name?” Laura asked as they slowly started back to where they’d left John and Peter. 

“Ned,” he replied stiltedly. “I don’t usually-” 

“It’s okay,” Stiles said. He just wanted to stop talking about it. Unfortunately, Derek and the rest had witnessed his freak out, and he would need to explain. 

“What happened?” Derek murmured. “Laura had to tell Peter to stay with your dad, they both wanted to go, but…”

Stiles rubbed at the ache in his chest. “It wasn’t…” He sighed quietly. “It just sounded like one of my—my friends. I think that’s how incubi like him work.”

“Oh.” Derek looked down. “Were you close?”

“All of us, yeah. Like siblings.” He thought of Erica asking Boyd out, just two months before the bombs. “Sort of, most of us.”

“Like a pack.”

Stiles glanced at him. “Aren’t packs all related by blood?”

He shook his head. “They can be, but they can form if—it’s just looking out for each other, helping and taking care of each other.” He glanced at Stiles’s face and away. “I’m sorry about your friends.”

“Me too.” He looked at Derek. “I’m sorry about your pack.”

He nodded. 

John grabbed at Stiles when they got back like he’d wandered off in the mall as a child again. “What are you trying to do to me?!”

Stiles had to swallow before answering. “I heard Danny.”

John froze. 

Stiles’s friends had become like his family, too, he knew; they’d all spent holidays together, weekends, birthdays, random dinners and hanging out. 

“How?” He looked at Laura finally, tensing when he noticed Ned. 

“Ned is an incubus,” Laura explained. “He feeds on affection, and witches are very sensitive to their, um, auras, and Stiles heard him from…pretty far away.”

“I see.” John’s hand tightened on Stiles’s arm briefly. “So…?”

“He’s going to sit with us while we have lunch, so he can…eat?” She glanced at him for confirmation. 

He nodded at his feet. 

“So let’s have lunch.” She nodded enthusiastically. 

Stiles didn’t think it would work—they’d gotten a bit closer, but were they close enough to feed an incubus who lived off of affection? He doubted it. They barely knew each other. He shook his head and sat between John and Derek, eating bits of magically preserved beef from the cow Peter and Laura had caught days ago, watching Ned. 

He was sitting beside Laura, knees pulled up to his chest. He already looked slightly better, so it must have been working—he had more color, and he didn’t look quite as dazed. 

Stiles looked at Peter, who was watching Ned, too, glowering with bright red eyes. 

It must’ve been the affection between the Hales, and John and Stiles, that was feeding Ned, really; Stiles couldn’t imagine that it was anything else. He dropped his gaze to his food again. Stupid. He’d been stupid. He should’ve just ignored it, but…if it had turned out to be Danny somehow, he would’ve hated himself. 

“I’m sorry,” Ned blurted. 

Stiles looked up. “Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled. 

“No, I’m—really sorry, for imitating your friend. It just…happens sometimes when I’m…very hungry.” 

_Starving,_ Stiles guessed. “It’s okay. I should’ve—I know they’re dead, I-” he stopped when Ned looked crushed. “Wait, I-”

“I’m so sorry, I can’t control it, I-”

“It’s okay,” Stiles said firmly. “I know it wasn’t on purpose.”

Laura looked between the two of them. “So how have you survived alone? If you’re starving?”

He scuffed his shoe on the cement. “I had a group,” he admitted. “But they were all basically strangers, so the affection was more like obligation and—I don’t know, I felt like I was making things worse.” 

Laura frowned. “I doubt that’s true.”

He smiled weakly. “No one trusts me. They think I’m taking their life force but it isn’t like that.” He swallowed and looked down. “I don’t think it’s like that, anyway.” 

“I’ve read about incubi,” Stiles said. “Modern incubi rarely kill, and they got a bad rap from vampires and lamia in the past, so no one can say for sure if they _ever_ actually killed.” 

Ned smiled a little wider. “Thanks.”

Stiles nodded and looked away again, picking at a scab on his arm.

Ned stayed with the group for about an hour, listening to them talking about nothing. He was twenty-two, which meant he’d been _twelve_ when the bombs dropped, impressing all of them even though he insisted it was only with the help of others that he survived.

Derek and Laura started having an argument with their eyes; Stiles watched it progress to curled lips and flashing eyes, but neither spoke a word. He could guess what they were arguing about: Laura wanted Ned to come with them, Derek thought it wasn’t a good idea. Stiles wondered how they’d managed to go so long without picking people up before him and John if Laura was this soft-hearted. 

Peter made an unhappy growling noise, drawing Laura and Derek’s attention to him. 

Stiles sighed. 

“You okay?” John asked quietly.

“Yeah. My own fault, I knew better.”

“Doesn’t hurt to have hope.”

“Yes it does.” He wiped his cheeks. “They were human, Dad,” he whispered. “It was my job to protect them.”

“Most of them were out of town,” John pointed out. “How were you supposed to do that?”

He should’ve been _with_ them. But then he wouldn’t have been able to save his dad. “I don’t know.” He leaned his head on John’s shoulder, closing his eyes. When he opened his eyes, Ned nodded and stood up. 

While Laura was still using her scary glare to browbeat Derek and Peter into agreeing with her, he slipped away, walking quickly. He disappeared around the side of a building before Laura noticed him. 

Laura scowled. “Go after him!”

“Let him go.” John sighed quietly. “Don’t want to scare him by chasing him, right? If he wanted to stay, he would have.”

“He’s so young.” Laura looked upset. “And alone.”

“Laura…” 

She glowered at Derek. “I know, I know.” She sighed. “Should we get a move on?”

They packed up what little they’d dragged out and let Laura pick the direction they went in; she was pretty good at going north even on overcast days when they couldn’t find the sun, so it made sense to let her lead. It started raining as they were passing the Dollar General.

Laura sighed. “Damn it.”

Stiles opened his hands palm up; a shield stretched over them, similar to the one he’d been using for the sun, but wider, thicker, and curved like an umbrella. “We’ll have to walk slowly,” he told them. “I’m not sure I can keep this with us as we move.”

“Can’t you use the one you did when it was hot?” Laura asked, moving her feet impatiently.

“That only blocked UV rays, not solid—er, liquid…physical things.” He wiped rain off his cheeks. “It won’t block the rain,” he muttered. “Or we could just get soaked.”

“Nope, slow is good.”

They had to pass a few cars in a parking lot, but since they were already moving slowly, they felt safe so long as they kept their distance. Stiles was concentrating too hard on keeping the shield around them while they were walking to worry about them anyway. He just hoped the others would keep him from running into an explosive Range Rover. 

The rain got heavier, to the point that it became a concern; the wind blew in hard, howling gusts, whipping their damp clothes against them. 

“It’s gonna set off the cars!” Derek caught Laura’s arm. “We should take cover for the night.” 

She looked frustrated. “Fine, but we have to find a place to use first.” 

“That clothing store up ahead,” John suggested. “Looks mostly in one piece.”

Laura nodded, resigned. 

Something bright caught Stiles’s eye, a flash of red-orange in the rain-washed gray. He turned, seeking it out just as it darted out of sight. He whipped around.

A fox pranced by, roughly the size of a large dog, with a long, whip-like tail that lashed out as he watched. A large scorpion fell from a mountain of asphalt and the fox pounced, ripping into it eagerly. 

Cold rain slipped down Stiles’s shirt as the shield cracked, then shattered. “Shit! Sorry.”

Laura said, “Just go, we can make it, even if we’re wet.” They left the fox to its feast, praying it was the most dangerous thing nearby. 

The store they took shelter in used to be some kind of women’s clothing store, judging by the posters that were mostly worn away. The doors were shattered and the clothes were mostly gone, what was left in tatters, but behind the checkout counter, in the loading dock, was clear of glass and blocked from the elements. 

Laura slumped against a pile of cardboard boxes and rubbed her face. 

Stiles dropped his backpack near her and circled his fingers, creating a beam of light to follow. He wandered over to some sealed stacks of boxes by the loading door. They were all strapped together and wrapped up with plastic wrap, stacked way above his head on top of pallets. He flicked his finger down the side, burning the plastic away until he could get to the cardboard. Colorful t-shirts cascaded down on him, all of them wrapped in tissue paper for some reason. He grabbed an armful and dumped them into Laura’s lap.

She picked a pink one up. “‘ _Sweetheart_ ’?”

“You can use them to dry off and to wear until your stuff dries,” Stiles called over his shoulder as he sauntered back to the boxes. He ripped open more of them, freeing an avalanche of t-shirts with nonsensical phrases on them. “Derek, can you give me a hand? I’m hoping there’s pants up there.” 

Derek looked up from wringing out his shirt. 

“I’m sure we can find something in your size, nice dry clothes,” Stiles wheedled. “Please?” He grinned when Derek joined him at the boxes. “I just need help reaching the upper boxes.” 

“Okay.” Derek put his hands on his hips, following the beam of Stiles’s light up to the higher stack. He squatted behind him.

“I’m not standing on your shoulders, if that’s-”

He wrapped his arms around Stiles’s calves and lifted. 

Stiles squawked in panic, arms paddling at the air before he managed to grab one of the boxes to balance himself. “ _Why?_ ” He pressed his forehead against the cardboard, catching his breath.

“You said you weren’t going to stand on my shoulders. Are you going to open the boxes or not? I’m dripping down here.” 

Stiles glared down at him before turning to the boxes. 

They looted as many of the boxes as they could and Stiles got the great pleasure of personally handing Derek a pair of sweatpants with a peach printed on the ass. 

“This looks like a slumber party,” Laura snickered. She fussed with her clothes, spread out on the cement floor, but they were all still wet, stretched out on the floor drying. She wasn’t wrong; they were all decked out in fuzzy pink, purple, and orange sweats, hair wet from the rain, curled up to keep warm. 

Peter looked particularly offended by the purple sweatshirt Laura had forced over his head, which read _I run on pumpkin spice_ across the chest. It was the only one; Stiles suspected it was left over from the previous fall. 

Stiles snorted. “We should find some candles.”

“One step ahead of you. The bakery,” Laura explained, digging some small jar candles out of her bag. 

Stiles flicked his fingers at each one she set out, a total of five, which gave the room a cozy glow. 

Thunder boomed outside.

Laura winced. “We’re probably stuck here for the rest of the night,” she muttered. She looked over her shoulder and sighed. “The rats should stay away, they’re afraid of us still.”

“Bright side is we can use the mountains of clothes as beds.” John put his hands on his hips and Stiles had to stifle a laugh. He was wearing one of those faux-velvet jogging outfits, vibrant yellow with orange stripes down the sides. He looked like a birthday candle. He pointed at Stiles. “Laugh it up, you look like a Carebear.”

Stiles crossed his arms over his own sweatshirt, which had pink arms, a white middle, and a big pink heart in the center. He wasn’t _wrong._ “I’m going to do a perimeter sweep,” he huffed, turning on his heel. 

“I’ll come with.” Derek stood and followed him. 

Stiles kept walking, afraid that if he waited or turned around, he’d see the others staring at them. There was no way they hadn’t noticed what he and Derek were doing, no matter how discreet they tried to be. There just weren’t enough distractions in the world, no TVs to turn on, no theaters to sneak off to—just them going to “check the perimeter” or whatever lame excuse they came up with and the others pretending not to notice. 

It wasn’t a big deal, or Stiles wasn’t going to let it be, anyway. 

Derek caught up but didn’t say anything as they stepped out onto the sales floor. “I could’ve said I was going to the bathroom,” he offered. 

Stiles snorted. “I don’t think that would have mattered.” He kicked some glass out of his way, watching it skitter over broken floor tiles. 

The store front was mostly empty; even some of the metal display racks were gone or taken apart, and something was rotting in one of the corners. They steered clear of it and watched the storm for a few minutes; in the distance, something exploded. Stiles thought it was thunder until the floor rocked. 

“Car,” Derek muttered. 

Stiles looked at the windows, but the sheets of rain made it nearly impossible to see the parking lot. He backed up just in case. “Guess we made the right choice, stopping for the night.” 

Derek nodded without looking away from the windows. 

Stiles turned a slow circle, pausing when he noticed the fitting rooms. He looked down at his Carebear-chic, then the glittery peach on Derek’s ass and shrugged. “Wanna go make out in the changing rooms?”

“Yes.” Derek was _still_ watching the storm, so Stiles took his hand and tugged lightly. 

The little fitting room with a latch on the door was the most privacy they’d had since the farm house; Stiles didn’t want to waste it. He hopped up on the little bench and tugged Derek closer. “Come on.” He patted his lap, then scowled when Derek eyed him skeptically.

“I don’t want to crush you.”

“Oh, I can handle it.” He caught Derek’s hips and pulled him in; he grinned when Derek got up to straddle him. “ _That’s_ more like it, come here.” The kiss was hot and urgent, picking up right where they’d left off, desperate for each other’s taste and warmth. When Stiles plucked at the waistband of Derek’s sweats, he nodded frantically, breathing hard against the side of his neck. Stiles had only managed to wrap his spit-slick hand around him when the bench groaned, then collapsed under their combined weight, dumping them to the floor in a tangled, throbbing heap. A piece of the bench jabbed Stiles in the back of the thigh.

“Could you let go?” Derek squeaked, and Stiles realized he had him by the junk in a death grip. 

He let go hastily, then dropped his head back on the wreckage and laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe. 

Derek sat up, nose twitching. “You’re bleeding.” His voice was mostly back to normal.

Stiles nodded, wheezing, and made a vague gesture that he hoped conveyed “don’t worry about it” because he couldn’t quite speak yet. He sucked in a raspy breath and managed, “Did I break your dick?”

Derek scowled at him. “I’m fine,” he growled. “Did you hit your head?”

“Probably,” Stiles snickered. “Oh my god, what is with our _luck?_ ” He giggled, going willingly when Derek pulled him up right. His leg was a little scraped from the wood, as was his head, but he was mostly fine. “Sorry I tried to strangle your junk.”

“Please stop,” he grumbled. 

Stiles wiped tears from his eyes and grinned. “Hey, at least-” he inhaled- “we’re making memories in the apocalypse.”

Derek snorted and leaned in, smacking an unexpected kiss to his mouth. “Yeah,” he said softly, “memories.”


	16. Chapter 16

The weather still managed to surprise Stiles. It was different daily, sometimes hourly, and yet, somehow, when snow fell in heavy clumps while they were sweating under the unbearable sun with no discernible change in temperature, he found himself stunned. How, he wondered, had they screwed things up so badly? It was bad enough that they’d killed almost everyone, mutated everything else, and created an uninhabitable wasteland, but they’d fucked the atmosphere, too? He guessed they were lucky the air was still breathable, but, wow, that was a low bar. He watched the snow gather on the ground and immediately begin melting, the dirt too hot to sustain it. It should’ve been too hot for it to fall as anything but rain. 

“Ugh,” Laura muttered, shaking it out of her hair. “It’s nice for cooling down but it gets in everything,” she muttered. 

Stiles nodded, too overheated and overwhelmed to reply. He glanced at John, but he seemed okay; Stiles had been casting shields over him ever since the temperature spiked. Everyone else was tolerating it, but Stiles wasn’t sure John could without getting dehydrated or having heat stroke. 

Better safe than sorry, especially in this case. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if something happened to his dad, but he knew it would be ugly. 

They walked in an uneven line until the sun had fully set, but it was worth it when they stumbled into the cover of a group of trees, tumbling over each other drunkenly.

Stiles took watch after Laura, deep into the night when it became eerily quiet. He waited until she passed out to get the Book of Shadows out of his bag. He cast his senses, checking that the others were fully asleep before he flipped open to the page he’d marked with a piece of bark. 

It was a spell to grow carrots, noted as easy by Jana. He muttered to himself, because he’d been trying this spell in small bursts for _days_ and it hadn’t worked for him once. 

He put his fingertips in the dirt and closed his eyes. The spell probably would’ve been easier if he wasn’t trying to create the carrot from nothing; even some witches skilled with garden magic preferred to start with seeds, even if they _could_ create the plant without one. It was harder and took more magic, but possible. He wrinkled his nose. If he could explode whole werewolves into dust, he could grow a single fucking _carrot._ He let his magic surge, rushing into the dirt, urging something to grow. 

The dirt became hot.

He yanked his hand away and looked, scowling at the crumbling, burned hole he’d created in the ground. 

It was close to dawn when he thought to cast his senses again, checking over the group while he was surrounded by six smoking holes in the ground. He felt them all sleeping, even Peter, who tended to wake at random intervals in the night, and then he felt…someone else, someone with an aura like a plant, carrying chaos in their head and unfamiliar. Fear jolted through him so he did the only thing he could think of: he sent that fear to the others, silently waking them without having to leave his post.

Laura woke first, gasping and launching straight to her feet. “What’s going on?” Her voice was hoarse from sleep, her eyes glowing red but unfocused.

Peter got up on all fours, partially shifted and tense, while Derek woke more slowly on his other side. 

A glance over revealed that John was awake and on his feet, gun in hand but pointed down. He looked the most alert. 

“Someone’s close by,” Stiles breathed, moving closer to John. “They feel dangerous and they’re moving this way.” He kicked his bag behind him and thought of a spell; would he need something lethal or just something to stun? He looked at John and the rest and prepared a lethal spell. 

A woman stepped out from between two trees and paused, looking surprised. She had long, deep green hair tangled with leaves and twigs, flushed terracotta skin, and full blue eyes—no separation between pupil, iris, or sclera. “Oh, you scared me!” She gripped at the strap of the leather bag over her shoulder, fingers flexing nervously. It looked empty, flat and light on her hip. “I—I was just passing through.” 

“From where?” Laura demanded, leaning forward. 

Stiles looked at her incredulously. She sounded eager, what the hell was she doing?

“Oh, up north. I’m heading south.” She waved a hand. “I should’ve known better, though, I’m really built for warmer climates.”

“Most elves are,” Derek said slowly. 

She shrugged. “I heard it was nice there, and it was, but—too cold.” 

“Oh.” Laura looked disappointed. “What was it like?”

“It was…beautiful, but too cold for me.”

Stiles glanced at Derek, then John, brows raised high. There was no way a random elf just _happened_ to pass by them as she was leaving the same place they were heading. 

“What do you mean by beautiful?” John asked.

“Come sit, tell us about it,” Laura added cheerily.

Stiles whipped around to gape at her, but she ignored him as she led the elf to their banked campfire. He, Peter, John, and Derek sat together across from the two of them while the elf introduced herself as Wren and declined Laura’s offer of food.

“So how was it?” Laura asked eagerly. “Was it livable?”

“Oh, definitely,” Wren replied. It was hard to tell, but her eyes looked sort of vacant, to Stiles, but maybe that was just because he’d never met any other elves or spent time getting to know their expressions. “Like it was before, lots of green grass and flowers, sunshine that only ever changes once in a while, some trees.”

Laura looked entranced, like a kid listening to a bedtime story. 

Stiles nudged John. “No way,” he mouthed. 

John nodded, mouth compressing to a line. 

“There’s barely any snow the further north you go and it’s sunny, but cold, way too cold for me. My…” she hesitated, then smiled, braiding a twig into her hair. “It was a long trip, but I think I’ll be better off in the south, probably.”

Stiles focused his magic on Wren, prodding at her mind while she chatted about whatever Laura was asking her. It took a minute, as people tended to resist invasions to the mind instinctively, and psychic magic was its own type that Stiles hadn’t fully mastered. He had managed it after finishing school, much to his everlasting and somewhat juvenile regret, but it was probably better that way anyway. He turned his face against John’s shoulder and closed his eyes to hide the gasp when he nudged into Wren’s mind.

It was chaos—Wren was confused and distressed, fighting with herself while outwardly portraying a calm demeanor. It was _shocking_ how different she was under the surface, how she spoke to Laura so pleasantly about sunshine and flowery clearings and how inside she was a twisted mess. She didn't even seem aware that she was speaking, let alone in the presence of five other people. 

“Laura,” Derek growled. “That’s enough.”

She looked over at him, frowning. “We should pack up,” she said instead of answering him. “Sun should be coming up soon.” She stalked to where she’d left her blanket and bag. 

Stiles made a gesture at Derek to wait and hurried over to Laura, crouching beside her. “Look-”

“Don’t, Stiles.” She looked at him and suddenly her expression was tense, almost frantic. “You _slept_ through the first ten years of this, but I didn’t. If there’s any chance for a safe place _far_ from other people, I’m taking it.” 

“But it _isn’t_ a chance, Laura,” Stiles snapped. “Something is wrong with her, it’s like she’s reading from a script. She doesn’t even have any supplies. Something isn’t right.”

Laura looked over at Wren, suspicious for the first time. She dropped her gaze and shook her head. “We have to try.”

“This is dangerous, we could be going into a trap-”

She stood and walked away without answering.

Stiles straightened, frustrated, and caught John’s eye. He threw his hands up.

John shook his head.

“I wish you the best of luck,” Wren was saying. “I have to go south now.”

“What’s south?” Stiles demanded.

She blinked at him. “The queen.” 

Laura glanced over at Stiles, uneasy. “What…queen?”

“The queen of the south,” Wren said, placid as a lake. “There’s a settlement that she runs that I think might suit me better. I just have to find it.”

“A settlement?” Derek repeated, looking interested. 

Wren nodded. “I’m not sure what it’s like, obviously, but it seems better than going it alone.”

“Yeah,” Derek muttered, shooting Laura a look that she apparently refused to see.

Stiles shook his head, panic making the woods feel closed in and small. Factions in the south, a trap to the north…but it’d been ten years, so it made sense that people were making homes, even, possibly, communities. Ten years was more than long enough for groups to form. He looked at Laura, then Derek, and knew, faced with the same choice, he would’ve chosen to go into isolation, too. He just thought Laura was going about it the wrong way, so determined to go to some kind of unclaimed utopia that, at best, wasn’t as nice as everyone said it was, and at worst, had been claimed and was being used as a lure for others to harm them. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Laura said sharply. “We’re still going. We have to.”

Stiles looked at Derek for help, but he was glaring at the ground and wouldn’t look up no matter what Stiles did to get his attention. He looked over at Peter, who was glaring at Laura but wasn’t speaking up—wouldn’t speak up. 

“Laura, you should think about this,” John said slowly. “There’s something wrong here.” 

She shook her head. “And it can’t _possibly_ be anything else that’s setting your alarms off?”

Stiles hesitated, cutting a glance toward Wren, who was trailing her fingers over the trunk of a nearby tree. “Could be, um…” He rolled his shoulders. “A mental illness,” he mumbled, and it could be. Bipolarism, schizophrenia, even anxiety and ADHD tended to render mind reading magic unpredictable, give feedback that wasn’t the truth. 

Laura nodded. “So it isn’t a sure thing.”

“Laura,” Derek sighed.

“Where else will we go?” she snapped. “It’s like I told Rian and Kira—what else have we got to do?”

“Survive?” Stiles muttered, watching Wren wander away into the trees like she’d forgotten they existed. “I still think it’s a trap.”

“Noted.” 

“Me, too,” John added.

She glowered at him, then glared when Derek muttered an agreement. “Jesus christ,” she growled. “I get it, _none_ of you have faith in me. Anything else?”

“You have dirt on your cheek,” Derek offered, making her bare her teeth at him. He grinned weakly. 

Once they got on their way—no one tried to follow Wren, and Stiles only felt a little badly about that; he’d never met an elf and wasn’t sure if her mental state was normal for them or not, or if it was just a bad interaction between his and her magic—Stiles glanced sideways at John. Would it be safer if he and John split from the Hales now? He didn’t trust what may lie ahead, there were too many signs suggesting this would be a huge, giant trap. He couldn’t guess what kind, but the possibility was enough for him. He had to do what he could to protect John and himself, and that was the bottom line—would they be in more or less danger if they split up now? 

He couldn’t help looking around, remembering the wasp, the husks, the lynx back in that hotel. Even if there was danger up north, they were probably safer together; five against a threat was better than two against a threat. 

“We’re staying,” John murmured. “Don’t even pretend to look outraged, you were thinking the exact same thing.” They shared a commiserating smile; loyal to stupid lengths was, apparently, the Stilinski way. “At least this way there’s safety in numbers.” He rubbed his eyes.

Stiles looked over at Derek, who was watching them. He looked away quickly, back toward John. 

“Nope. Not my problem.” He put his hands up and lengthened his stride to catch up with Peter, apparently deciding his silent company was better than theirs. 

“I know you think it’s stupid,” Derek said before Stiles could speak. “Following her plan.”

“Seems like a pretty bad idea, yeah. So why are you?”

He shrugged, avoiding his gaze and sort of almost tucking his chin. “She’s my sister and my alpha, and…” He sighed. “For eleven years, pretty much the only family I had. I can’t just give up on her now.” 

“But what if it _is_ a trap?”

“What if it isn’t?” Derek shot back.

Stiles sighed. 

“Seriously. Who would want to trap us? Basically everyone we knew,” he gestured at Peter and Laura, “is dead either from the bombs or the aftermath. Why bother? There’s so few people left, what are the odds anyone would fall into a trap that’s been set anyway?”

He shook his head. “Haven’t you ever seen an angler fish? Hope is the lure.” He sighed and held up a hand. “If it _is_ a trap, what will we do?”

“Fight,” Derek replied grimly. “Together, and hopefully, get out alive.”

“Great,” Stiles muttered. “Perfect.”

Derek knocked their shoulders together lightly. “If it isn’t a trap, and it’s like everyone says, we’ll be able to stop, finally. Build a house and a livestock pen like Laura wants, and they say the weather is nice so you’ll be able to get a garden going when we get settled.”

Stiles nodded as he stared ahead, unseeing. Was that why Derek was “interested” in him? Why the kissing and sneaking off had started? To keep Stiles around, like a relationship might convince him to stick around and provide them with a fucking garden? 

Then again, was that why he wanted Derek, why he went along with it—aside from finding him attractive and funny—to convince him to let Stiles and John stay even though he _couldn’t_ seem to do garden magic?

He dropped his gaze, watching his dirt-caked boots as he walked. He hoped it wasn’t like that for either of them, but he wasn’t sure of himself and _certainly_ wasn’t sure of Derek, and he hated that. He hoped…he just hoped, a little bit, for the first time in a while.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just posting a little early <3

The cold woke him; he tried to curl closer to John before realizing no one was beside him. His heart slammed against his ribs, his breathing loud and shallow. He tried to sit up and realized his hands were stuck together—taped, he realized, at the wrists. He let his head fall back, struggling to suck in a breath. It was like breathing through a straw. 

As he wheezed, he tried to take stock of his surroundings. It was cold and dark—his eyes were open, but he couldn’t see a thing, not even shapes. Beneath him was gritty stone rather than dirt, and he didn’t seem to have any of his things with him. Just what he was wearing. 

He turned, resting his cheek on the cool stone for a moment. The air was stale, closed in, and the silence was deafening, only the faintest rustle of noise coming from his right. He pulled in a breath through his nose, one-two-three, then let it out, four-five-six. His wrists were bound with tape, the heavy duty duct tape Peter had found, judging by the way the adhesive tugged against his skin, and he could smell something sweet, a faint, flowery fragrance drifting lazily over him. 

His legs weren’t bound, so he kicked the ground, rolling himself onto his front, and held his arms out as far from his back as he could get them, wincing as his shoulders strained. He pressed his palms together and, with a quick burst of magic, incinerated the tape. The heat hurt briefly, but faded within a second. He sat up, rubbing at the sticky residue on his wrists and continuing his measured breaths. From the feel of things, he was in a cave, and the lack of light indicated he was blocked in, or far from a way out; this would be the worst time to panic. 

He curled his fingers together, shining a light on the ground in front of him.

“ _Hey!_ ”

He nearly leapt out of his skin, the voice was so loud and sudden, directly in front of him. He whipped the light up as he stood, hopefully blinding whoever it was.

The faint rustle he’d noticed grew louder; warm golden light spread from the group of people before him. 

It took him a moment to realize they were faeries, to notice the sheer wings most of them had; there were more than a dozen, all eyes on him, and more than a few were armed. One with silver hair and glowing white eyes stepped up, holding a wooden staff. 

Stiles lifted his other hand. “Stay back and tell me what you want.”

She lifted her brows. “You.”

He laughed. “Yeah, _why?_ ”

“You’re a witch. We need your magic.” 

“Really.” He scoffed. “You’re _faeries._ Your magic is more than strong enough.” 

She shook her head. “We can’t make things grow the way we used to.”

“Yeah? I can’t, either.”

A large faery at her side stepped forward, fists clenched. “Do not _lie_ , boy, we’ve seen what your kind can do.”

“Everly,” she snapped.

“No! They did this, they should fix it!”

“ _I_ didn’t,” Stiles snapped.

Their gazes shot to him. The silver haired one said, “Well, you’re half-human, so you played a part.”

He laughed dryly. “Okay, fine. That doesn’t change the fact that I can’t make things grow.” 

Everly scoffed. “Abbyl, he’s-”

She lifted a hand. “Your kind has built farms before from dirt, from nothing. Are you so weak a witch that you can’t?”

He curled his lip. “I have a different kind of talent.”

“Why don’t we force the magic from you and see if that works?” Everly lifted a glowing red hand, wings fluttering behind him. 

Abbyl shook her head. “That won’t work.”

“Then we take the magic from him,” one of the others muttered, lifting a green sword and stepping around Abbyl. “Maybe we can use it ourselves.” 

Stiles shifted his feet, bracing himself. “Stay back.” He flexed his fingers one at a time. His magic stirred as if it could sense the impending fight. 

“Kester, _don’t,_ ” Abbyl ordered, but he and Everly advanced anyway, the red light on Everly’s hand spreading.

“Stop,” Stiles snarled. “Last warning.”

Kester scoffed and swung his sword.

Stiles thrust his hand out and flicked his fingers.

The blast rocked the cave, throwing several of the fey to their knees as Kester exploded. His sword clattered to the ground. 

Everly roared and threw himself at Stiles, the red in his hands growing like flames.

Stiles flicked both hands at him, turning his face away to avoid the gore spatter. His magic sang inside of him, lighting up in the heat of battle. When three faeries converged on him at once, he merely had to rotate his wrist. 

The concussive blast blew them all off their feet and set the cave rumbling, the ground pitching underfoot.

A chunk of rock clipped Stiles’s shoulder; he looked up, holding a light in his palm, and saw cracks running along the ceiling and walls. He scrambled backwards. 

“You aren’t leaving!” one of the fey hissed, and several rushed him again.

He glanced at them, then blasted the wall to his left. An earth shaking crash sent him to his knees and he had to throw a shield around himself as the walls and ceiling began to collapse. He put his arms over his head instinctively, squeezing his eyes shut as the world continued to shake. 

Rocks bounced off the shield, making him flinch with each strike, until finally, the noise stopped and everything went still.

Stiles waited, arms still over his head, then slowly looked up. Rocks had piled around his shield, a foot of clear space at the base of it, mostly in front of him due to the repellent magic on the outside of it. There was a solid wall of crumbled rock between his shield and where the majority of the faeries had been. He frowned and dropped his shield; the air was hard to breathe, as rock and dirt particles were still settling in the air, creating a gritty fog. He held up a hand, light glowing between his fingers. 

A faery with golden hair looked up at him, baring his teeth. His wings lifted, blue light filtering off them as he straightened. They stared at each other for a moment; he had a cut on his cheek that was bleeding slowly, and dirt on every inch of his clothes. 

Stiles offered, “I could kill you now.”

He pulled out a curved, white-bladed dagger with leaves carved into the metal. “I could do the same.”

Stiles tipped his head. “We’d make it out faster together,” he pointed out after a moment. 

His jaw clenched, wings fluttering restlessly behind him. He lowered his dagger and folded his wings in. “Perhaps. What’s your name?”

Stiles smiled tightly. “You first.”

His eyes narrowed. “Aspen,” he muttered. 

“Stiles.”

“That isn’t your real-”

“It’s what people call me.” He turned away, holding his hand up to see the rest of the cave. There were a few darkened tunnels, but he couldn’t guess which they might need and which would lead them deeper in.

Aspen sighed and stepped around him, kneeling and pressing a palm to the ground. “I can feel a path that goes to the surface but it’s—it’s blocked by…something, I can’t…”

Stiles glanced over his shoulder. Their other option was him blasting through the wreckage he’d caused, running the risk of collapsing the rest of the cave onto them. “Let’s follow it anyway. I’m sure we can get through whatever’s blocking it.”

Aspen shot him a narrow look before taking the tunnel to the left; his wings spread over his shoulders like armor, with the added bonus of giving off enough light that Stiles felt comfortable dropping his own.

The tunnel was just wide enough to walk single file, low enough that Stiles had to duck his head a little, and cold; he wished he had a sweater or something other than just the short sleeved shirt he’d fallen asleep in. It was probably better that he couldn’t see much; he already felt claustrophobic.

They walked in silence for a while; Aspen had recently tried to kill Stiles, and Stiles had killed at least three of his comrades. There wasn’t much to say, but the silence was starting to feel suffocating.

Aspen radiated prickly hostility, too, giving Stiles the distinct impression that attempts at small talk would result in bloodshed. 

He wanted to ask about his group—had he been taken while everyone was asleep or was there a fight that he’d missed? Were they hurt or dead? Alive? Also, where the hell were his things? _And_ how had they moved him without waking him? He dismissed that last one as it came to him, because the answer was obvious: fey magic.

He was about to ask when a distant sound stopped him: a rushing sound, separate from the silence pounding at his ear drums. He put a hand on the wall nearest to him, then jerked it away. He let light pool in his palm; his hand was wet. The wall was damp. He held his light up to it; tiny streams of water were moving down the wall and a glance down revealed it was puddling on the ground. 

“I’m not waiting if you fall behind or get lost,” Aspen said from several feet ahead.

Stiles looked at the water, then caught up to him. “There’s water in here.”

“We are inside of a mountain,” he pointed out dryly. “What did you expect?”

Stiles shook his head and went quiet, listening to the rushing water. It sounded close, but he had no idea when they might walk into it, or if they’d wind up going around it. He eyed Aspen’s wings warily and considered how likely it was that he was being led into a trap. The fey clearly hadn’t expected him to fight back, so would they have had a back-up plan? Was Aspen coming up with it on the go? Or just trying to get out of the cave, like Stiles?

The tunnel widened gradually, until, with a rush of cold air, they stepped out into an open area. Their path wound along one wall, but to their left was a steep drop down far enough that Stiles couldn’t see the bottom. He pressed his shoulder against the wall and held his light higher so he could keep an eye on the gaping abyss they were walking next to. 

Aspen slowed to a stop, forcing Stiles to look up from intensely watching where he was stepping.

“What?”

Aspen turned so his back was against the wall and Stiles saw…a waterfall, of sorts, pouring down just in front of their path. It was narrow, only as wide across as Stiles’s shoulders, but it was flowing fast, easily enough to sweep both of them off their feet if they got too close. The ground was completely soaked ahead, gleaming and quite obviously slick. 

“I’m just throwing this out there, but I think we should crawl along that part.”

Aspen glanced back at him and scoffed. “Are you a child?” His gaze swept over him. “Never mind.” 

Stiles scowled. “Fine, but when you slip, I hope the water doesn’t shove you down before you can fly back up,” he muttered. 

Aspen scoffed again and kept walking, straightening his shoulders. 

Stiles had no ridiculous pride that kept him from scooting along to ensure he didn’t die, so he carefully lowered onto his hands and knees, wincing as jagged pebbles pressed into his palms and knees. The waterfall was loud as he got close to it, roaring right next to his ear. 

Aspen was wearing soft-looking leather boots that apparently didn’t have very good grips, because he had to cling to the wall as he crept along. 

Stiles wasn’t having as many balancing issues, which he was pretty smug about. He’d be soaked, but alive, so he definitely won this round. 

Aspen gasped, flailing a hand out as he tipped over the edge.

Stiles lunged up automatically, reaching for his arm as he slipped over the edge; their hands bumped but missed, not quite grasping. Magic exploded out in bright orange ropes around his wrist and hand, catching Aspen’s arm. The yank nearly sent Stiles over the edge too, but he braced his legs and caught himself before he slipped.

Aspen clutched at the rope, his eyes wild. His wings fluttered uselessly against the push of the water, so Stiles assumed flying was out of the question. 

He pulled at the magic the way he would a real rope; he’d never used this spell or even seen it before, but he could grab the light ropes and that was all he needed to think about at the moment. 

Aspen pushed up as soon as he could reach the ledge, scrambling to the wall. He collapsed against the wall, breathing hard. 

Stiles leaned back against it, too, staring at his hand. The orange rope was still wound around his wrists and fingers, up to his elbow. It had let go of Aspen as soon as he was out of danger, but Stiles wasn’t sure how to end the spell. He made himself take some deep breaths with his eyes closed until his magic calmed down, settling but ready, still revved from the fight earlier. When he opened his eyes, the rope had faded. He sighed and glanced over at Aspen, jumping slightly when he was already staring at him. He scowled. “What?”

Aspen shook his head. “We should move away from here.”

“Probably.” He couldn’t help smirking when Aspen carefully rolled onto his hands and knees to crawl away before he followed him. 

About fifteen away from the waterfall, the path widened again, and the walls began narrowing slightly, tapering back into a tunnel, though it was wide enough to walk beside each other this time. They were both soaked, which made the cold air of the cave even worse. 

“Can you really not grow things?” Aspen asked suddenly.

“What?”

“Your magic is obviously very powerful. Why can’t you grow plants?” 

Stiles shook his head. “My magic is for battle,” he muttered. “There’s different types for us and some come easier to some of us than others. Attack magic comes to me.”

Aspen glanced at him sidelong. “You made a shield and that rope.”

Stiles shrugged. “Still, I can’t really make _life_ , make things grow. I can destroy things,” he added.

“Hmm.”

He looked at him. “How have you all survived if the plant life isn’t working for you?”

“It _is_ , just…differently than it used to, and we can’t…can’t grow more or new things, we can’t make homes the way we did before, we can’t grow food.”

“No one can, that’s why everyone is so desperate.” Stiles scoffed. “What, you think you guys are the first ones to try to kidnap me for your own gain?”

Aspen shrugged. “Immortal beings don’t really know how to adapt.” 

“We’re all going to have to adapt. There’s no going back.”

He was quiet for a long moment. “You’re probably right.” Another long pause. “We’re all screwed if we can’t grow crops.”

Stiles sputtered out a surprised laugh. “Yeah, we are.” He shrugged. “The earth needs to heal first,” he sighed, mouth twisting.

Aspen frowned and stretched his wings out, shaking water off them. When he said, “Thank you,” he used an intense, almost formal tone. “For saving me.”

Stiles glanced at him, then faced forward again. “No problem.”

Aspen nodded slowly. “The path is this way.” The tunnel curved slightly, so they were walking blind, and the stone above their heads rose in uneven spikes and dips.

Stiles cast his senses, then shuddered. “Whatever is blocking the path is alive and aggressive,” he muttered. He tilted his head. “I can’t…it isn’t an animal but it isn’t really…” 

Aspen glanced at him again. “Hmm.”

A low rumble filled the tunnel, echoing quietly behind them, making the hair on the back of his neck raise, which was odd, because it wasn’t a particularly sinister noise. Unless it was their path being collapsed gradually, blocking them in. He flexed his fingers and prepared to blast through rock. Even if it drained him, he wasn’t dying in this damn cavern. If anything, he would die trying to get out of it.

Aspen grunted, stretching his wings out fully and blocking Stiles from walking on. The gentle light brightened, revealing a pile of gray-black rocks that was blocking the path. The pile was also pulsating somewhat, and the low rumble was coming from it. 

Stiles huffed. “Move, I can-”

The pile of rocks shifted, turning and twisting like snakes before a pair of glowing blue eyes snapped open and glared at them. It straightened more, until arms, legs, and a torso started to form, towering above them. Its mouth opened to reveal sharp red teeth, a growl echoing around them. 

“What is it?” Stiles tried to edge around Aspen, but he shifted with him, using his wings to block him.

“Goblin,” he replied. “Don’t attack it. Most of them aren’t violent.” He looked up at it, fluttering his wings a couple times. 

The goblin bared its teeth and growled, hunching forward and flashing its eyes green.

Aspen shook his head slightly, confused. “I don’t-” He held a hand up, his palm glowing green.

The goblin roared and charged, swinging an enormous stone fist at Aspen.

Stiles grabbed him and yanked him back a step.

Aspen elbowed him in the ribs and planted his feet, glaring up at the goblin.

It growled furiously.

Stiles huffed and scrambled back.

The goblin, apparently not swayed by whatever Aspen was doing, charged.

Aspen’s hands flashed purple, but the goblin collided with him anyway, shoulder ramming into his chest and throwing him off his feet. 

Stiles pressed himself flat to the wall. “Can I fight it _now_?”

Aspen scrabbled out of the way as the goblin charged him again. “It isn’t-” He yelped and rolled as the goblin nearly stamped on his arm.

It lunged down, teeth snapping with a sound like thunder in the closed space. 

Aspen screamed as it bit into his wing, shredding the delicate blue membrane. 

Stiles swore and let go of the wall. He centered himself and flicked his hands at the goblin. 

The blast hit its shoulder, knocking it back a step. It looked up, baring its teeth with shreds of Aspen’s wing hanging from its jaw.

Stiles glared at him. “I don’t think I can just stun it.”

Aspen was flushed, his cheeks tear streaked, left wing ragged over his shoulder. He nodded and turned his face away, shuddering. 

The goblin snarled and swung a fist at the wall, making the tunnel quake.

Stiles thrust his hands out. 

It took the spell a second, winding around the goblin before constricting. The explosion rocked the ground, sent bits of rock and a gelatinous brown substance flying through the air.

Stiles wiped his face on his shirt, then rushed to Aspen. “Um—I’m not great with healing magic.”

Aspen nodded, staying down. “I can—my family can heal it.” He pressed his forehead against the ground, breathing hard enough to send up puffs of dust. He sat up eventually and looked over his shoulder at his ripped wing, shuddering with pain. Then he looked over at one of the chunks of stone left over from the goblin. He touched his fingertips to it and murmured something, hands lighting up a soft yellow.

Stiles looked away guiltily, but the thing had been trying to kill them, and any stunning magic he did would probably have killed it anyway, his magic was so hyped up from the fight earlier. It was practically pumping off of him now, bursting from his pores from this victory. 

Aspen cleared his throat. “Come on,” he said, straightening up. “The path leads to the surface.” He got to his feet painstakingly, using the wall for support. His face was white and sweaty, eyes gleaming. 

“Do you need help?” 

“No. It isn’t that bad.” He swallowed and pushed off of the wall. He wasn’t quite limping, but he was walking sort of oddly, like he was off balance. 

Stiles followed at a distance, trying not to skip; his blood felt like it was sparking in his veins, making his heart race. Using his magic in fights, _winning_ fights, it was…it energized him, sometimes in a bad way, like he’d had four shots of espresso in one go.

The path began to incline until they were climbing up a craggy wall toward what looked like daylight, a weak thread of gray-blue in the near dark. 

Aspen was struggling, shaking hard enough to lose his grip on the rocks several times. 

Stiles stayed behind him, prepared to catch him if he fell. At this point, he felt semi-responsible for Aspen, which was frankly fucked up, considering the kidnapping thing.

“Opening’s too small,” Aspen muttered. He leaned against the wall, leaving just enough space for Stiles to squeeze past, dropping his head against the rocks next to him. 

Stiles absently threw a shield around him and used his free hand to blast open the tiny hole in the rocks. When he glanced back, Aspen was frowning at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he mumbled, stepping past the rubble from the opening and out. 

It was cloudy and cold outside, giving the impression that they hadn’t quite left the cave. They were on a ledge about four feet above the ground, which was covered in sparse grass and blood. 

There were fey in the small clearing before them, between the mountain and trees, hurling balls of light at…

The Hales, Peter, Derek, and Laura, all of them partially shifted as they fought back.

Stiles jumped down, searching the group for his father. His heart hammered when he couldn’t find him; something thudded behind him and he whirled, lifting his hands.

Aspen yanked his dagger out with a trembling hand and watched Stiles warily. 

“You gonna stab me?” Stiles asked.

He shrugged. “Only if you fire.”

“We don’t have to fight,” Stiles pointed out, lowering his hands slightly. 

Aspen looked at him for a long moment, then squatted and pressed a palm flat to the dirt. He looked up, brows furrowed. 

“I can stop the fighting, but only if you let me go.” 

“I don’t think we need you,” Aspen said slowly, still frowning. He straightened with an effort. “I can make them stop, but only if you call off your pack.”

“They’re not—fine. Together?”

Aspen nodded. 

Stiles jogged ahead a bit anyway, rushing to Derek first; of all of them, he was probably the least likely to attack Stiles on accident, in the heat of the moment. At least, he thought so until Derek lunged at him, teeth first. “Derek!” he shouted, dodging.

Derek hesitated, then blinked, the gold fading out of his eyes. “Stiles?”

“You have to stop Peter and Laura. I don’t know if I can—my magic is-”

Derek grabbed him in a crushing hug. “We thought you were dead!”

Laura snarled from somewhere to the right, followed by a wet ripping noise. 

“But I’m not, and we have to make Laura and Peter stop!”

Derek shook his head. “They kidnapped you.”

“Abducted, and it’s not-”

Peter roared and attacked a faery with red wings, teeth digging deep into his leg. 

Stiles, frustrated, threw a hand out and yanked it toward himself.

Peter hurtled toward them, plowing into Derek and knocking him off his feet, landing in a tangled pile two yards from where Stiles stood. 

“Sorry. Laura!” Stiles shouted, turning away from them. “Laura, stop!” He ran for her, blasting an energy ball off course before it could hit her. 

She finally turned and saw him, letting her shift fade so she could beam at him. “Stiles! You’re alive!”

“Yes!”

“Stop!” Aspen’s voice carried well, stunning most of the fey into stillness. 

Stiles turned and spotted him standing a few feet away, facing the ragged, panting group of faeries. “We’re leaving,” Stiles said. “No one needs to fight. Just let us go.”

“We can’t,” a faery with green hair snapped. “We need you.” 

“I can’t help you.” Stiles glanced nervously at Laura, but she was wiping blood off her hands, distracted. 

“He saved my life,” Aspen declared.

The group gaped at him, and judging by the prickly heat on the back of Stiles’s neck, his group was doing the same. 

“I owe Stiles a life debt. It would be best,” he said delicately, “if we let them go, because if you don’t, you will be fighting me as well as them.”

They looked fearful, glancing at each other like he’d made some grand threat. Maybe he had; Stiles guessed he _was_ the only one who’d gone after him in the cave and survived. That had to mean something. 

Aspen glanced back at Stiles and nodded, then walked into the group of fey. One of them healed his wing when he got close, holding a hand over it. A few of them glared at Stiles before they retreated into an opening in the mountain.

Stiles let out a breath and turned to find all three Hales hovering behind him. “Uh-”

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

He shook his head, confused until they converged on him, crushing him in the middle of a triangle of affection. He wheezed a laugh and managed to get an arm around Laura’s shoulder and Peter’s neck, his face pressed against Derek’s chest. “Where’s my dad?” he asked, muffled. 

“He’s okay.” Laura finally let go. “Those fuckers did something to make all of us sleep before they took you. Peter was on watch, John had gotten up to use the, uh, bathroom, and while he was gone, the faeries came. He followed them,” she added with an impressed grin. “Come on, he’s over there.”

Peter stuck close as they walked, head low like a guilty dog.

Stiles knocked their elbows together. “It isn’t your fault. They used magic.” 

He curled his lip.

John was with all of their backpacks, pacing with his gun out, a _bandolier_ tossed over his shoulder and across his chest like a sash, loaded with extra ammo.

“Dad!” Stiles ran for him. “Where the hell did you get that? Why do you have a sash?” he demanded. 

John holstered his gun and grabbed Stiles in a third hug as soon as he was close enough. “Reggie had plenty of ammo in that cellar of his,” he mumbled against Stiles’s shoulder. “No guns, but plenty of ammo.” 

“Of course.” Stiles glanced back at the Hales. “So you saw them take me?”

John let go. “Yes. I left a trail for the Hales and followed, so we wouldn’t have to waste time looking for you.”

“A trail of his stuff,” Laura added with pride. “Which was a great idea, because it rained and we would have lost his trail.”

“We tried to get in, but they sealed the cave behind them, so we spent most of the day trying to find either another way in or to break through the seal. A little while ago, there were some explosions,” he shot Stiles a look, “then they were all rushing outside. We waited to see if they’d move you, but you weren’t with them.”

“No, I had kind of…collapsed part of the cave while fighting them. On top of some of them.”

Laura nodded. “They didn’t know if you’d survived or not, which was when we decided to chat with them ourselves.”

Stiles lifted a brow. “Nice chat.”

She rolled her eyes. “We’re just _very_ glad you’re alive.”

“I’m fine. They just wanted a witch to grow them a garden or remake a forest for them or something.”

“Assholes,” she muttered. “Well, if you’re okay, I think we should move, so we can get away from them, just in case they decide your friend’s life debt isn’t a good enough reason not to abduct you.”

Stiles snorted. “Yeah, okay.” He was glad they were all okay, too, and honestly, everything just felt better when they were all together. Right. Settled. 

Later in the night, on Derek’s watch, he and Stiles made out behind a tree; Stiles thought Derek was probably trying to distract him by way of long, slow kisses, and it was definitely working. He sighed quietly and tipped his head back against the tree, letting out a shaky breath as Derek kissed his neck. He opened his eyes, gaze catching on the long, drippy-looking blue leaves, the spotted gray and black flowers mixed in, and felt a jolt of panic, the same fear he’d been trying to push down for hours. 

Derek noticed, pulling back. “Are you okay? Did I crowd you?” He took a quick step back. 

Stiles managed to smile at him. “No, I’m fine.” He swallowed. “But maybe let’s go back to sit, I’m not…I’m tired.”

“Of course. You don’t need an excuse,” he added more quietly. 

“I know. But thanks.” They weren’t far from where the others were sleeping, so the walk back took only seconds. 

Derek went to his bag for a jug of water and passed it to Stiles with a hesitant smile. 

“Thanks.” They sat next to each other, thighs brushing while Stiles sipped the water and stared into the embers of their fire. _Nature spirits_ needed help growing things. That was _not_ a good sign; could the world even be fixed at this point? They were a part of it and they couldn’t make it work like it used to. He knew what he’d said to Aspen, but how long would it take? They could die before things righted themselves. Everyone could die before things righted themselves. He plucked anxiously at the seam of his jeans, gaze skipping from Laura to Peter to Derek, guilt eating at him. He should tell them the truth. 

Derek leaned in, rubbing his cheek against Stiles’s neck. “I’m gonna go to sleep,” he whispered, as if he’d sensed Stiles’s need to be alone. “Should I wake Peter?”

Stiles shook his head, his throat too tight for words. 

“Okay. Goodnight.”

Stiles waited until he was asleep to set the water aside and crawl away from the fire, his back to the group. “Come on,” he breathed. “Just once, so I can know.” He held his hand over the grass, pulled Jana’s carrot spell up in his head, and closed his eyes. Magic surged, making his fingers twitch.

The ground rumbled. He looked and felt tears prick his eyes; a three foot crater stood smoking in the ground before him, flames licking at the sides. He squeezed his fist, smothering the flames, and turned away, covering his mouth to keep quiet. All he did was destroy; how could he think he was capable of sustaining life?


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost to the end! I hope you guys are enjoying it <3

It took Stiles a few days to recover from the blow of failing once _again_ to grow anything rather than destroy, but once he did, he decided to attempt growing something other than carrots. He’d never liked carrots and clearly the magic could sense it, resent him for it. So he tried everything else, only about three times each before moving on to something else. He attacked his task with vigor in the hours of his watch shifts, when he could get away without arousing suspicion, sometimes even while they were walking. 

John clearly noticed, but Stiles wasn’t trying to hide it from him, and he didn’t say much about it in the hours he watched Stiles try and fail to grow a myriad of plants. 

“Where is the sun?” Laura grumbled.

They were in the woods again, under a ton of very healthy trees with wide, bright orange leaves that effectively blocked the sun. They were thick and waxy, hardy. Stiles had taken a couple for potion work later, determined to try using some of the new plants around them. He liked them and their energy, even if Laura was disgruntled by their shading capabilities. 

Derek shrugged. “Okay, it’s red and…small?”

“Yep.”

The walking got monotonous after a while, so they’d started playing whatever games they could come up with—I Spy was the game of the day. 

He scanned the ground, the trees. “Uh, one of those…mushrooms?”

Stiles peered closely at the “mushrooms”. “No, and I think those are beetles.” 

Derek stopped to look. “Oh.”

“Still no.”

He laughed and swore good-naturedly, looking around, making Stiles smile. There was a red button on Derek’s backpack strap, no bigger than a nickel that he’d most likely forgotten was there. It was on the left strap, Stiles’s side, and it deeply amused him that Derek hadn’t noticed it yet; even more amusing was the fact that he refused to give up.

Peter glanced back at them, his gaze shooting straight to the button on Derek’s bag, then to Stiles as he smirked. 

Stiles shook his head. 

Derek looked around, brows furrowed in concentration, scanning over everything around them. “The zipper on Laura’s boot?”

Stiles looked. “Ew, no.” There was blood caked on her boot zipper. 

Derek laughed. 

A distant roar echoed through the woods, shaking the leaves over head with a heavy rustle. 

Laura slowed to a stop, turning her head. “I can’t tell where it’s coming from.” She waited, the tips of her ears elongating.

Someone let out a sharp, drawn-out scream. 

“We have to help,” John said.

Laura looked like she disagreed heartily, nose wrinkling, mouth twisting.

Stiles kind of did, too, but he knew John would go anyway, and where he went, Stiles went. 

Derek looked between all of them.

Laura huffed when another roar rent the air. “Fine. But if we get eaten by a cougar or something, I’m going to be mad.”

“Fine.”

“The noise is coming from that way.” She pointed, her expression still set in disapproval. 

John shoved past her and Peter, the cast iron pan he had hooked to the side of his backpack swinging like a pendulum. 

Stiles went after him, smiling slightly when he heard the others following them. 

Whatever had roared was making snuffling noises, snarls, and growls now, likely as it closed in on its prey. 

The trees grew further apart as they ran, spaced apart and leaking sunlight. Stiles still managed to trip over a root; he threw his hand out, catching himself on a tree trunk. He yanked his hand away, horrified, when it landed in something thick and wet. 

Clear, sticky sap or mucus of some kind dripped from his fingers, long strings of it still attached to the tree. 

“What is that?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his hand to dislodge it, but the slime just swung like snot. “Doesn’t matter,” he decided. “Come on.” He tried to wipe it on another tree, but it just attached him to that tree. He groaned and shook his hand, frustrated, while he chased after the others. 

The ground shook with another roar, sending Stiles’s heart racing.

John cursed and started running.

Derek caught up to him, then veered left, following the sound easier than John or Stiles could. Before they could follow him, Derek’s feet flew out from under him, a loud yelp bursting from him as he hit the ground. 

Peter caught Stiles’s arm before he could try to help him and pointed.

There was a bear several yards ahead, snarling and swatting at a gray wolf, who was trying to lead it away from three people absolutely covered in blood. 

“Jesus,” John muttered. 

“Okay,” Laura said faintly. “I guess we should help.” 

Peter elbowed Stiles.

Derek was stuck in a puddle of the same mucus Stiles had gotten on his hand, struggling to pull himself out. 

“Laura, try to help Derek,” Stiles ordered. “Dad, Peter and I will…distract the bear if you can get the injured people out of sight.” 

John nodded, but Laura shook her head. 

“ _I_ should help with the bear.”

“Can someone just help me?” Derek growled. He lunged up and managed to grab a tree branch in both hands. His biceps bulged as he pulled himself, kicking his legs to push out of the slime. 

The branch cracked like a gunshot, sending Derek back into the slime with a wet squish.

Laura cursed softly. 

The bear was looking at them.

“Okay, _now_ ,” Stiles ordered. 

John bolted left to go around the slime and out of the bear’s line of sight. 

Stiles edged right and lifted his hands; the left one was still covered in the slime, sticking his fingers together a bit, but he could still move it.

Peter shifted and stood beside him. He growled, tail lashing, and stepped toward the bear. 

The bear, which was still deciding who it wanted to go for. It turned its gaze upon Laura and Derek, struggling with the slime. 

“Oh, fuck,” Stiles muttered. “Guys, um. Don’t panic.”

“ _What?_ ” Laura snarled. 

“The slime is coming from the bear. I think, um, that’s how it catches prey.” He managed to glance at Derek, still fighting to free himself. 

Peter snorted and, with a snarl, threw himself at the bear. Peter was bigger than normal werewolves, but the bear still had him by a lot, and its fur was slick with the slime it was oozing; his teeth slid off every time he got close enough to bite. 

Stiles shook his head and flicked his wrist, trying to throw them apart. 

The bear stumbled back a step, shook itself, and roared, swinging a mighty paw. It batted Peter away like a toy and charged at Stiles. 

He looked around; he didn’t _want_ to kill it, it was just trying to eat. He winced and slashed a hand through the air. 

A red line cut across the bear’s chest, right through the slime and fur, but it barely bled. The bear paused, heaving for breath, then roared. 

Stiles scowled at the goo on his hand. It must’ve been dampening his magic, making it weaker and barely effective. “Fuck.” 

Peter jumped on the bear’s back, teeth latching into its shoulder _finally_.

It roared and shook itself, flinging Peter right off. 

Stiles saw the gray wolf creeping up behind it, head low, teeth bared, and shook his head. It wouldn’t work. He clenched his left hand and dropped it to his side; he thrust his right hand into the air, then brought it down flat. 

Ice encased the bear in an instant, between one beat and the next. 

The gray wolf plopped her butt down, startled. 

Laura and Derek limped over, sporting patches of bright red skin and covered in slime. “You can make ice?”

“It doesn’t melt,” Stiles sighed. “Or I’d have been using that spell to get us water.” 

“Oh.”

Peter shook himself; he was also dripping with slime. 

The gray wolf shifted into a tall woman with pale blonde hair. “Come with me, Alex can help you get that off.” She ran over to where John and the other three were waiting.

The injured man was holding a woman with red hair by the shoulders, and it took a second for Stiles to realize his teeth were latched in her throat.

Stiles’s heart dropped; he managed one step before the other werewolf jumped in front of him, holding her hands out.

“She offered! It’s so he can heal, see?”

The wounds on the guy _were_ healing as he drank, first his leg, then his arms and chest. “Vampire?”

“Yeah, and she’s a werewolf, so she’ll be fine.” She turned and ran toward them. “Is Curtis okay?”

“Put some clothes on,” the other man grumbled, hovering nearby next to John. 

“Yeah, in a minute.” She checked the vampire’s healing wounds first, then snagged a pile of abandoned clothes and got dressed. 

The man scoffed and walked over to Stiles and the others. “Want some help with that?”

Stiles lifted a brow. “Yes, please.”

John snorted. He was standing by the vampire and werewolves, arms crossed. 

“I’m Alex,” the guy said. “Uh, I’ll have to go one at a time.” He shot Peter a wary glance and started with Derek. He put a hand over Derek’s head and water poured from his palm like he’d turned on a faucet. 

Stiles waited until last, observing the process. “It’s just my hand.” He held it out. “Thanks. You’re…not a witch.” 

His shoulders tensed. “No,” he muttered. 

“Hydrokinetic?” Stiles guessed. 

“Yeah.”

Stiles nodded; kinetics weren’t really witches, though they were powerful in their own way. There were a ton of variations, and, like witches, had strengths in specific areas. 

Alex jerked his chin at Peter. “What is he?”

“A werewolf.”

He scoffed. 

Stiles frowned at him. “The bombs…didn’t agree with him.”

Alex let go of Stiles’s hand, the flow of water stopping. “He wasn’t the only one,” he muttered. 

“What-”

He turned on his heel and stalked back to the group.

Stiles looked at his hand. The slime had been washed away.

“What’s wrong?”

He looked up at Derek. “Uh, nothing. I don’t think.” He wiped his wet palm on his jeans. “Let’s go catch up to Laura.”

Peter followed with his backpack in his jaws, his coat glistening wet in the sparse sunlight filtering through the leaves. 

“Thank you for your help,” the blonde werewolf said with a quick grin. “That was some good spell work.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m Sirena. This is Rachel, and that guy doing the Carrie impression is Curtis.”

“Thanks very much,” he said dryly.

“No problem,” she chirped. Then she swung her gaze back to Laura. “We’d like to share some food as a thank you, alpha, if you’re willing. Um, but probably further from here. Don’t want anyone stepping in the mucus.”

Laura glanced at John, then Stiles and Derek, saving Peter for last. “Alright. We could stop for lunch.”

“Great!” Rachel pulled her hair back with a piece of string. “Alex can fill your water jugs, too!” 

Alex made a face at her but didn’t protest. 

Laura coaxed Peter back to his human shape while they moved to a slightly less slimy area, then ordered him into clothes, ignoring his snarling and grumbling. 

Sirena and Curtis set out a blanket once they’d cleared the trees, then pulled out cloth-wrapped food bundles, making it almost look like a picnic. 

“So are you guys pack? Like, from before?” Rachel asked, swinging her backpack off her shoulders.

“We are.” Laura gestured at herself, Peter and Derek. “We met Stiles and John along the way.”

She nodded. “Cool. We all met a few years ago.” She flashed a bright smile. “Sirena saved me from a giant snake.”

Sirena sighed. “We got tossed off a cliff into the ocean. I still don’t count that as a rescue.”

Rachel fluttered her lashes at her, making a kissy face. 

She scoffed and turned back to the food.

Rachel giggled. “We met Curtis a few months after that, all alone in a building in, uh, I think Santa Rosa?”

Curtis nodded. “The rest of my family had been killed by a swarm of ants the size of Chihuahuas. I was wounded when they found me.”

There was a pause where they all expected Alex to tell his story and they all tried not to look at him as he pointedly did not.

“Hey, Alex, can you fill their water jugs?” Rachel asked brightly.

“Yes,” he grunted. “Just put them in a line.”

Stiles studied him for another second before he complied and everyone else followed suit.

Alex filled their containers, then sat beside Curtis and grabbed a piece of meat.

“We ran into a witch who accepted some meat in exchange for these,” Sirena explained, waving the cloths around. “They preserve whatever they’re covering.”

“Cool.” Stiles picked up a piece, letting the meat rest on his lap while he examined the cloth. 

John patted him on the shoulder and sat beside him. “Thank you for sharing your food.”

Sirena smiled. “We’re grateful that you helped us. Normally we can hold our own but it surprised us.”

“Oh?” Laura pulled Peter down to stop him from pacing.

Curtis covered his face.

“Curtis stepped in its mucus trap thing and got mauled before any of us even knew it was there. By then we were freaking out, so it was able to corner us.” Sirena shrugged. “You guys showed up right after I decided to try to lead it away from the others.” 

“Who screamed?” John asked, brows furrowed. 

Sirena put a hand up. “It’s—I’m loud,” she boasted. “Sometimes the noise makes them pause, which can buy us a few seconds.”

“Enough time to shift,” Laura guessed. 

Sirena nodded enthusiastically. “Right.” 

Stiles looked over at Alex while he picked at his food.

He was glaring at his lap, hands folded and thumbs tapping. Water gathered between his palms, then dissipated, and he huffed, dropping his hands palms down on his knees. 

“We’re heading east. Far east,” Curtis emphasized. “I’ve got—or I had family out there.” He looked worried briefly. “My cousin Rosalva will have survived, if no one else.”

Laura nodded. “That’s good. We’re lucky, we were all close together when the bombs dropped.”

Curtis nodded. “Very lucky.”

Rachel grimaced. “My pack was killed during the aftershocks, Sirena’s by another pack. And Alex-” She cut herself off, wincing.

“My family is all dead,” Alex said flatly. “They were all human, so they’re dead.”

Stiles couldn’t help himself. “Kinesis is genetic,” he blurted. “How—were you adopted?”

“No.” He turned toward Sirena, eyes narrowed, and nodded curtly. 

Rachel touched his leg gently while Sirena explained, a wordless offer of comfort. 

“Alex was human before, too. But the magic, or maybe the bombs…or both…” She looked at Curtis. 

“We think the explosion activated dormant powers in some humans, protecting them.”

Stiles froze, his breath whistling on every inhale. “You’ve…met others like this?”

Rachel nodded. “And they weren’t all kinetics, either. Some were werewolves, vampires, psychics, witches. We even met a necromancer who hadn’t known he wasn’t human before.”

Stiles couldn’t breathe. “How—how many-”

Sirena and Rachel shared a look. “We avoid people generally but maybe, counting Alex, twenty-ish? Since the bombs?”

“All together,” Curtis added. “They always had their own groups, so it wasn’t like we could seek them out.”

“But they—they all started out human?” He felt John looking at him sympathetically but he didn’t look away from Sirena.

“Yes.” She glanced at Alex. “I’m sure there are more…”

Stiles looked down. Could they be alive? Just one, _any_ one of his friends, even Jackson? Beacon Hills had a way of drawing supernatural creatures; it was why Claudia had settled there before meeting John. All of their families had been locals for as long as anyone could remember. Could one of them be alive? Could it be possible one of his friends had been like him and hadn’t even known it? 

“If you’re human, how did _you_ survive?” Alex demanded. 

“Stiles did a spell,” John explained. Their voices sounded distant and fuzzy. “It protected both of us.”

Stiles couldn’t stop thinking about it. While they packed up and as they were going their separate ways, all he could think was that if even one of them was alive, he had to find them.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting early again. I keep having Fridays off somehow, so I end up wanting to post so I can share while I'm not at work, lol. Dumb. Oh well, it's close enough and I'm sure it's already Saturday somewhere.

The snow storm was so bad that they could barely walk; Peter and Stiles, the tallest of the group, were in it up to their thighs, cutting a path for the rest of them. Stiles was doing frantic spells to protect them all from frost bite, so he couldn’t spare the energy to melt it. The wind cut through their clothes like knives, biting at the exposed flesh of their faces and hands. The snow fell like an unending curtain of white and Stiles could barely breathe, the air was so thin and cold. 

“We’ll be okay,” Laura shouted over the wind. “We just have to go to a little further-”

“No!”

John caught Stiles’s arm to keep from falling when they all whipped around to look at Derek; Stiles did another spell to protect John from the weather, so sure the cold would cut through him. 

Derek was glaring at Laura, blinking snowflakes out of his eyes. “You’re being selfish and reckless and we could _all_ die out here. We need to find somewhere safe until the storm stops!” He had to shout over the wind, his voice a sharp, furious snap.

Laura looked shocked, taking a step back from him. “Fine! But where do you propose we stop?” She threw her arms out at her sides. “There’s nothing _here!_ ”

John shuddered against Stiles’s side. He hadn’t spoken in a while, conserving his energy for walking and staying above the ever deepening snow. 

Stiles pressed his fingers against his wrist and did a warming spell, flushing life through his limbs. He couldn’t warm the air around them, but he’d figured out, finally, under pressure, how to warm them up individually. 

“We’ll find something, but then we _have_ to stop.”

Laura simply turned and walked on, pushing through the thick snow with single-minded determination. Her backpack was a spot of lime green in the otherwise gray and white landscape. 

Stiles glanced back at Derek. “Th-thanks.”

Derek just nodded, catching up to him and John. 

Peter caught Stiles’s hand unexpectedly, squeezing his icy fingers into his palm. He waited until Stiles looked over to nod at John.

“I’m keeping him warm,” he snapped, insulted. 

Peter squeezed his hand again, pointedly, and tapped his index finger to his own chest. He shook his head.

“You’ll die,” Stiles said flatly. “It’s too cold.” 

Peter grinned, butted his head against Stiles’s cheek, and tore away, running past Derek, then Laura, until he was lost to the thick snow.

“What the hell is he doing?” John demanded, nearly tipping out of Stiles’s grasp.

“I don’t know.” Stiles tugged until they caught up with Derek and Laura. “You guys have to stay close so I can keep you alive!” he snapped, irritable. 

Derek pressed against his other side. “Sorry. Did Peter…”

“I don’t know.” He cast his senses out; he could still feel Peter, who was calm but determined, searching for… “He’s looking for shelter.”

“Makes sense.” Derek shuddered and tucked his chin into the collar of his jacket. 

They were silent when Peter returned, too cold and exhausted to do more than walk. He ran circles around them, herding them like a sheep dog, a comparison Stiles couldn’t help making out loud. 

Derek popped him over the head for the comment, making John laugh weakly. 

Peter led them to a cave with a narrow opening that was partially obscured with snow. He kicked his way through it so they all followed his trail.

The walls blocked the wind, a blessed reprieve. Stiles turned to the opening where the snow was spilling in and shot fire at it, melting it away. 

“Do we still have that stuff we grabbed?” he asked through his teeth.

Laura fumbled with her bag, dumping a collection of wood and dry grass into a pile. They’d known it was going to be cold, so they’d gathered some stuff to make fires before they’d left the woods, which was probably Laura’s best idea.

Stiles set it up like a campfire and lit it, doing a spell to keep it burning, then flopped down a foot away from it. His toes and fingers burned as warmth finally seeped in. 

Laura watched the storm by the entrance, hands on her hips. “Snow’s just gonna keep getting in.”

Stiles rolled his eyes and waved his arm; a thick wall of ice covered it. “Now it won’t.” 

John groaned as he sat beside Stiles, holding his hands out at the flames to warm them.

Stiles shook his backpack off his shoulders and scooted closer to the fire. He looked up as Peter approached, grinning. “Good find, thank you.”

Peter snorted and shucked his pants, then his coat and shirt, shifting and wriggling between Stiles and John. He huffed and curled his tail around Stiles’s waist, laying his head on John’s lap and letting out a long sigh. His fur was short and sleek, but he gave off heat like a furnace, warming them quicker than the fire. 

Stiles patted his neck gratefully and looked up; Derek and Laura were arguing in hushed voices by the ice wall Stiles had made, both gesturing sharply and glowering at each other. Derek still looked as angry at Laura as Stiles had ever seen him, shoulders bunched up tight, jaw flexing every time she cut him off to speak.

Stiles turned away and stared into the fire. He could go separate them, but they probably needed to talk, and he was so exhausted that the idea of getting up left him hollowed out. He had nothing left to give. Everyone was safe for the moment. He nodded off against Peter’s back. 

When Stiles woke up, everyone else was asleep, except Derek, who was on watch. The fire was still going, casting shadows on the wall like gleeful dancers, warming their little campsite. Stiles gently untangled himself from Peter and John, glancing at Laura—curled in a fitful ball a few feet away, before going to sit by Derek.

He barely looked up from the fire. “Are you cold?” he mumbled.

“Not really.” The stone was cold under his ass and his jeans were still a little damp, but in general he’d warmed up. He felt Derek look at him, felt his intense stare like a weight.

With the others sleeping so deeply and the rest of the world blocked out, it felt like they were alone, just the two of them. Stiles had thought that would be a nice feeling, but the stress of what might be waiting for them—and what might _not_ be—just made it tense, lonely. He put his fingers on the back of Derek’s hand, just to be sure he was really there. 

Derek flipped his hand over and laced their fingers together without saying a word.

They leaned in at the same time, foreheads tipped together at first, just breathing the same air. Stiles pressed a kiss to Derek’s mouth first, light and lazy, barely a kiss.

Derek mimicked him and he reciprocated until they were kissing with intent, still holding hands even as they moved closer together.

They didn’t speak beyond murmured curses, even when they stood in unison and moved deeper into the cave, until the light of the fire barely touched them and the warmth was long out of reach. Stiles didn’t over think things, didn’t second guess himself or Derek, he just accepted the affection and pleasure Derek was sharing with him at face value. They wound up on the cold stone together, curses and each other’s names on their lips, kisses and bites and shivery, shuddery moans. They curled together afterward, relaxed and, at least for Stiles, a little less alone.

Stiles rubbed his cheek against Derek’s shoulder. “I think we’re walking toward danger,” he murmured. 

“I think so, too,” Derek said quietly. He drew in a shaking breath. “But Laura and Peter are my only family.”

Stiles nodded, squeezing his eyes shut. “We’ll just have to be ready.”

“Right, but for what?”

“I’m not sure, and that’s part of the problem.” They stayed where they were for a little longer before the cold started to get to them.

Derek sat up with a sigh. “At least we can melt some snow to use to clean up.”

“You are absolutely right, and a genius.” Stiles had to use the wall to pull himself to his feet. “Don’t look so smug, my legs fell asleep.”

“Mmhm.” Derek continued to look smug. 

Stiles opened his mouth to insult him a little, and saw a flash of orange light out of the corner of his eye. He turned, but couldn’t find it.

“You coming?” Derek asked, amused.

“Um, yeah, in a second. I’ll catch up,” he promised. “I just need a minute.” 

“Okay.” Derek’s voice was soft, barely a murmur, followed by his echoing footsteps.

Another flash from the left had Stiles turning. A row of faint orange lights formed a trail, spread evenly apart, leading even deeper into the cave. Stiles thought of will-o-the-wisps, glanced over his shoulder, and followed the trail.

The air grew colder and sharper, stinging his lungs as he inhaled. The walls were lightening from gray stone to ice, crystal pale and gleaming in the dim light cast by the trail he was following. The ground became slick and treacherous, so he pulled his sleeve over his hand and held onto the wall.

The light grew brighter and then, suddenly, the trail fell away, except for one orange light. It flared brighter, exploding with sun-like intensity. A fox made of fire stepped out of the heart of it, and a raven glided down from the smoke.

Stiles clenched his jaw. “Tell me,” he said.

The raven flew at his face.

_Burning cold, desperation, anger, hunger, thirst. Stiles looked around, but all he could see was white, so bright it hurt his eyes; all he could feel was choking cold. Someone murmured soothingly even as their hunger grew; a sharp pain pierced his chest and began to drain him. He gasped and pleaded, but his voice was snatched away by the brutal wind. His legs gave out, collapsing him to his knees, and they kept pulling…he was dying._

Hands, warm, solid, real hands wrapped around his upper arms and shook him. “What’s going on? What happened?” Derek’s voice was muffled, far away.

When Stiles opened his eyes, his face was out of focus. He shifted his gaze over Derek’s shoulder, confused, but the fox and raven were gone. Just an omen, an echo of bad things. “I got a warning…I think.”

Derek’s face creased with fear.

They went back to the group together this time; Derek kept am arm around Stiles’s shoulders since he couldn’t stop shivering.

The rest were awake when they got back, weak sunlight filtering through Stiles’s barrier. 

Laura looked up as they approached; her expression read quite clearly, _What now?_ better than even Peter’s.

Stiles told her about his vision, relieved that she looked worried rather than skeptical.

“I don’t know what else to do,” she said. She covered her face and inhaled, shoulders shaking. “I just—I just want to keep everyone safe and there’s no one else up here.”

“That’s because of the freezing cold,” Stiles pointed out.

Her head came up. “The people we spoke to weren’t _lying_.”

“No, but something was wrong with them.”

She looked worried, picking at her nails. “I was just trying to protect everyone, I-” She jumped to her feet and yanked her hands through her hair, making it stand in uneven spikes. “I just wanted somewhere safe.” She inhaled sharply and gestured at the wall. “Let me out, please.” She snatched up her coat and pulled it on with sharp, jerky motions.

“Laura, it’s too cold,” Derek murmured.

“I’m not going far, I just need some air.” She wiped her cheeks, sniffling.

“It isn’t safe.” 

She growled and whipped around, punching at the barrier. With two solid punches and one furious kick, she’d made a big enough opening to get outside.

Stiles stared at where she’d gone, his head throbbing. “I’m sorry.” He felt like he’d done something terrible. 

“Don’t be,” Derek said, surprising him.

“It was for the best. Better turn around while we’re able,” John added. 

Stiles swallowed. “Let’s get some snow to melt, huh?”

John heated food while Derek and Peter gathered up snow for water, and occasionally shoved some down each other’s shirts.

Stiles had to look away, reminded harshly of Scott and himself. 

John passed him some food, which he took, grateful for the distraction. 

While the snow was melting in the pot Laura had been lugging along, Peter wandered deeper into the cave and Derek sat next to Stiles. 

“At least the wind died down.”

Stiles shot John a look. “The weather, Dad, really?”

“I could ask what’s on the front of your jeans instead, son.”

“You’re a terrible, terrible person,” Stiles hissed, flushing red and pulling his knees up.

John smiled. “You had to get it from somewhere.”

He stuck his tongue out at him.

Derek was staring down at his lap, his whole neck and face bright red. 

Laura hadn’t returned by the time they’d finished eating, and Stiles was getting worried. The sun was out and the wind had stopped howling, but it was still cold. He distracted himself by changing and washing up in the darker part of the cave. There was no reason to crowd her; she was nursing wounded pride and probably trying to figure out what to do next. 

Derek was pacing by the time Stiles finished changing, reluctant to go out but obviously stressed. 

Stiles stopped beside him, fingers resting on his shoulder, and cast his senses to ease his mind. His hand spasmed on Derek’s arm. “Get dressed.”

“Why?”

“I can’t feel Laura at all.” He let go. “I can’t—she’s not close enough, we have to find her.” He took a halting step toward the opening.

“No one panic,” John ordered. “We need to get bundled up before we go out there. Otherwise we’ll freeze to death before we can help her at all.”

Derek hurried to grab his extra layers, spurring everyone else into motion.

Stiles fumbled with the buttons on his coat when he noticed Laura’s bag, forgotten near the wall where she’d slept. All she had was her jacket, no supplies, no food, no extra layers. 

“Stiles.” Derek met his gaze, his eyes tense. “Is there anything you can do?”

Stiles swung his bag up on his shoulders. “I have some tracking spells I can try.” He waved a hand at the fire, putting it out and plunging them into darkness.

Peter grabbed Laura’s bag and his own, tolerating it when John exasperatedly pulled a hat down over his ears before he strolled outside.

Stiles stuffed his gloved hands in his coat pockets and followed him out, wincing as the cold slapped at him. 

John and Derek trailed them out, squinting in the sun.

Stiles climbed his way out of the deep, hard-packed snow that’d gathered in front of the cave and perched at the top of the pile, shivering as he scanned the blank canvas around them. No tracks. He pressed his hands together, low, lacing his fingers together as if in prayer. He exhaled a puff of white and spread his hands out. Red trails of light exploded in every direction like silly string before fading to nothing. He gnawed on the inside of his cheek and tried again, a different spell that hooked into Derek’s connection to his alpha and tried to follow it, but the line shuddered and collapsed.

He muttered a curse and slid down off the snow pile, stomping further from the cave. He flung his senses out wildly, wider than he normally dared, wincing as the cold emptiness around them invaded his mind.

Laura’s presence flickered, agitated and close, but somehow weak, hard to detect. 

“Found her,” he breathed. 

Peter and Derek grabbed an arm each and lifted him out of the hip-deep snow he’d walked into.

“Thanks. She’s this way.” He and Peter took the lead. Stiles did a spell to protect them from the tearing cold as much as they could as he walked and wondered if Laura had gotten lost or if she’d been ambushed. If that happened, it would be partially his fault, for not going after her or stopping her from leaving. He swallowed. They had to find her before she froze to death.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Hope you enjoy this chapter! <3 I will be posting the last two chapters on Friday because I want the whole story up and I wanna see how everyone reacts! Not sure when the sequel will be ready, but hopefully soon after that, maybe mid August!

They were never going to find her. The world was just a never ending stretch of white and gray, the air was stabbing at them from every direction, and Laura remained, somehow, just out of reach no matter how long they walked. They were shivering and breathless, walking close together like a huddle of penguins to keep warm. The sun was bright overhead but did nothing to break through the cold around them. Stiles looked over his shoulder. He hoped they weren’t lost, hoped they weren’t wandering further from her somehow. He did another spell to keep hypothermia at bay for a little longer. 

Peter snarled suddenly, shattering the silence, and shoved Stiles at John. His shoulders rolled in, face melting into a partial shift. 

Stiles looked at Derek wildly, gripping John’s arm, but Derek just shook his head, baffled. He felt out for Laura and went weak with terror. She was alive but relaxed and peaceful in a way that felt final, dangerous. Stiles squeezed John’s arm and sent a psychic dart at Laura, trying to alarm her through their connection. If she fell asleep somewhere in this cold…

Peter was snarling in the distance but Stiles barely paid attention, jolting panic and fear toward Laura, praying it would wake her.

“Fuck!”

Stiles looked up and finally saw what had set Peter off.

Two polar bears were charging at them insanely fast; they looked healthy but aggressive, and a lot bigger than Stiles was expecting.

“Stay back,” Derek ordered. He and Peter shifted completely, kicking their clothes off and running at the bears. Derek circled around them, snarling and barking, baiting them until their attention wavered from Stiles and John.

Stiles looked at his dad. “Why are there so many _bears?_ ”

John shook his head. “Don’t know, but we’re gonna have to do something before they get to Peter and Derek.”

Derek growled, his fur standing on end and making himself look twice as big as usual, facing both the bears while Peter circled around behind them. 

“I don’t want to kill them.” Stiles looked around, but he couldn’t see anything useful. He shook his arms out. He had a few spells from his babysitting days that might work if he ramped up the power he put into them. He flexed his fingers and shot a spell at the bear closest to them.

It jumped when the magic hit, but instead of gentling it to sleep, it pissed it off; the bear roared and spun around, nose in the air until it spotted John and Stiles. 

“Don’t you have anything better than that?” John muttered. 

“Okay, why don’t you do the magic spells while I hover in the background looking annoyed?” Stiles snapped. 

John huffed but stopped speaking.

The bear batted Peter out of the way when he tried to block it and started toward John and Stiles. It wasn’t running, not yet, just wandering toward them like it hadn’t decided if they were food or a threat yet. 

Derek yelped, leaping back and barely escaping the other bear’s snapping teeth; Peter raced to help him.

Stiles blew out a breath and thrust his hands out, palms forward, shooting a stronger sleeping spell at the bear. 

It shuddered and shook its fur out, shaking the magic off just as easily.

John backed up a step.

Stiles flung a shield around both of them as the bear got closer, cursing to himself. He glanced at the bear Peter and Derek were fighting, but they were too close to it for him to try anything; he’d have to get to that one after he dealt with the one currently hunting himself and John. He pursed his lips and lifted his hands, then brought them down.

The bear shook off the ice as easily as it’d shaken off the other spell, bared its teeth, and charged. 

“Fucking fuck.” He twisted his fingers in the air but the bear just plowed right through the ice wall like it was no more than a fluffy snowdrift. 

“Son,” John said sharply. 

They both flinched when the bear collided with the shield, bouncing right back off as the repellent magic hit it. 

It snarled and pressed its paws to the shield; ice spread from each point of contact, making Stiles shudder. It was somehow resisting the magic that made the shield useful, which was a new and terrifying quality to already pretty terrifying animals. 

John pulled his gun out, but it was just a standard issue sidearm and unless he made some kind of miraculous shot, it wasn’t going to do much to stop the polar bear. 

Stiles’s gaze flicked to Derek and Peter, evading the enraged bear’s lunges. When he looked back, the bear at their shield had its mouth open wide, biting uselessly at the curved surface. He flinched, shoulder knocking into John’s. 

The bear grunted and pushed at the shield with both forepaws.

Stiles shuddered when Derek yelped again, because this time there was a ripple of pain there, and Peter’s roar sounded desperate. 

More ice spread from the polar bear’s paws, tinting the orange with blue. 

“Okay. Step as far back as you can, because my other spells haven’t worked and I don’t know if this one is going to, either.”

John met his eyes. “You and I both know it’s the spell, not the bear.” 

Stiles scowled. “Fine. Just step back, I have to let the shield down.” He lengthened the shield so that John had more space to back away without looking away from the bear. 

“I’m as far as I can go, kid. Just do it. The Hales need us now,” he added sharply.

Stiles nodded, steeling himself. He dropped the shield, took a step back, and sliced a hand across the air in front of himself.

A fine red mist sprayed the ground, white fur drifting down like snowflakes.

Stiles’s magic rang like church bells inside him. He flung a warming spell at John and marched toward Peter and Derek without looking back, stomping through red-tinted snow. 

There was blood spattering the snow near them, mostly from Derek’s shoulder and around the bear’s mouth. Peter was blocking Derek, but he was outmatched and he knew it; he pressed his flank against Derek’s shoulder, moving him further away. 

Stiles ran; at this distance, he could accidentally hit Peter or Derek. 

The bear was huge up close, with paws as big as Stiles’s face and fangs as long as his thumb. The sound of its snarl as it lunged for Peter’s throat was the only noise in the world. 

Stiles threw both of his hands out. 

The explosion cracked the ice underfoot.

Stiles looked away from the gore and ran to Derek’s side, but the wounds were healing already. “Come on, we have to find Laura. Get dressed.” He turned and spotted the gore he’d created. He froze, swallowing hard, and made himself look away again.

“Stiles,” Derek snapped. “Please. Where’s Laura?”

Peter grabbed his arm and dragged him away from the mess he’d created, the smoking pile of flesh and bones. 

He wiped his face and nodded. “She’s close.” He cast his senses out and felt her peace, her…silence. “We have to go, I can’t—I can’t wake her up.”

Derek swore. “Which _way?_ ”

Stiles pointed.

Derek and Peter led, while Stiles lagged so John could catch up. His fingers were cold and stiff, so he cast another warming spell on all of them, shuddering as his skin heated back up.

“What the hell is _that?_ ” John caught Stiles’s arm. “Do you see that?”

He turned. “What the…”

Something dark was moving _fast_ through the snow toward them.

Derek turned, impatient, and spotted it as well. 

“Enough gawking!” Stiles shouted. “Move before it catches up to us!”

They ran; whatever was chasing them wasn’t making any noise as it cut through the snow, silent and swift. 

Stiles glanced behind him, unable to resist, and yelped as he careened through what felt like a heavy curtain. He tumbled into bright green grass, healthy and lush. The air turned from aching cold to spring warm and sunny, sweet scented with flowers that dotted the area.

John fell on top of Stiles, flattening him. “Oops.” He rolled off and patted Stiles’s shoulder apologetically. 

Peter was on his knees looking around while Derek rubbed his nose; he must’ve landed on his face, there was blood spattered down his shirt and chin.

Stiles sat up, wincing as his ribs throbbed from his backpack jamming into them. He looked up and wheezed. 

Laura was a few feet ahead, sprawled gracefully in the grass, fast asleep. 

He scrambled forward on his hands and knees, reaching for her pulse with shaking hands to confirm what his magic already knew.

She was alive, her pulse beating slow and steady in her wrist against his fingertips in sharp contrast to his own frantic one.

Derek nearly knocked Stiles flying when he noticed her; he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, making her neck snap back and forth limply.

“Stop, Derek!” Stiles grabbed at his arm, terrified he’d break her neck on accident.

He whirled on him, fangs flashing.

Stiles’s face hardened. “You’re going to hurt her.”

Before Derek could respond, a hand shoved at Derek’s shoulder. “Le’go,” Laura muttered. 

Derek yanked her into a hug instead. “Oh my _god_.”

Stiles looked away as relief made his eyes fill, and realized with a sudden chill that their sunny little valley was surrounded on all sides by snow, three feet deep and climbing; a blizzard must have kicked up, because Stiles couldn’t see anything but blowing snow.

Laura shoved Derek away from her, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead. “Ugh, why…” She lifted her head, her breath coming out in a heavy, surprised huff. “No, no, you guys run!” She climbed to her feet unsteadily, sliding her fangs out. She turned in a slow circle, mouth twisted in a snarl. “Run,” she ordered, shoving at Derek.

“Laura, what’s going on? Stop it.”

Stiles stood up and backed toward Peter and John, looking at the storm raging around them. He couldn’t even hear the wind, couldn’t feel a hint of the cold. There was a shield around them of some kind, a force field or something.

Laura shifted forward, her growls rising in pitch.

Peter grabbed Stiles’s arm convulsively.

A woman in a white tunic and leggings emerged from the snow, stepping delicately into the grass with bleached leather boots. She had long blonde hair, dark eyes, and pale skin, like she was trying to blend in with the environment outside of the valley. She had a small, straight nose and thin lips, the harsh slash of red the only color she possessed. She smiled. “Calm down,” she said in a melodic voice, holding her hands out.

Stiles shot his own hand out, deflecting her spell.

Her gaze lit on him and became… _hungry_ , and Stiles saw it: her magic was…wrong. Stolen. Sick.

She _tsk_ ed. “Isn’t this what you’d hoped to find?” She flicked her wrists and stepped right up to Laura.

Stiles gaped when Laura kept still as the witch caressed her cheek before realizing she’d immobilized all of them. The spell was strongest on Laura, as she’d obviously realized she was the alpha, so Stiles started on Derek, plucking and pulling at the edges of the spell.

She touched Derek’s face next, smiling. “I’ll let one of you live,” she said, then laughed. “Well, I have to. _Someone_ has to pass along my message.” She tugged on Derek’s hair, then ran her fingers along Laura’s jaw. “Not the alpha, obviously, or the _witch._ ” She glanced at Stiles, eyes gleaming. She sauntered over to Peter, lifting her hand to caress his face, too.

Peter snarled and she jumped, shocked; she hadn’t known Peter was an alpha, too, hadn’t used as much magic to hold him still, and he was fighting her. 

“ _Two_ alphas?” She looked thrilled and snapped her hand out, gripping his jaw tight in long, thin fingers.

He shuddered, skin rippling along his arms, until, with a whimper, he fell into his shifted form.

She inhaled. “Oh, my. What _are_ you?” She leaned close to him, examining his long narrow ears with apparent fascination.

Stiles threw his hands out.

The blast cracked like thunder, throwing her and Peter several feet apart, but she’d deflected the lethal shot—barely. Her hair fell around her face while she got back to her feet. “What—how-” She looked positively giddy, her face animated with desire. “I _want_ that.” She brushed at her tunic and strode back toward Stiles. “Not many witches like you have made it this long, you know,” she said, stepping around Laura. “Trying to stop the bombs killed them, either right away or eventually.” She smirked, eyeing him up and down. “You must’ve been like me. Smart to protect just yourself,” she added.

Stiles clenched his jaw, but he couldn’t argue. She was right; he _had_ just protected himself. He swept a hand in front of himself and aside, knocking her to her knees.

She bared her teeth and flung a hand out. Shards of ice flew like daggers at his face.

He deflected them and thrust a palm out, blasting a crater in the ground.

She pursed her lips, staring down into the pit. “I can’t wait to take that from you.” She jerked her chin.

A whirl of ice swept over him, cutting at his arms and face, digging through his jeans. He clenched his fists, stilling it, and punched his right fist out, hurling it back at her.

She deflected with an impatient gesture and locked gazes with him.

He felt her invade his mind and reacted instinctively, flinging a shield around his mind.

Peter snarled and lunged. 

The deflective spell knocked through her own defenses and Stiles felt himself slip into _her_ mind.

Her plans and deeds were bouncing around, every step carefully laid out over years of careful action. She would destroy the so-called Queen of the South and the little village she’d made, just like she had every other fledgling settlement that’d popped up, kill every other witch until she was the only one—or at least the strongest, and she would rule over the remaining creatures. She was systematic and skilled with psychic magic, and plenty of others too, as she absorbed them from the people that’d come looking for a utopia, just as she’d wanted. She’d sent out the sole survivors from each group, spreading whispered rumors of a paradise just out of reach, and when people came looking, she started the process again. 

Stiles snapped out of her thoughts as something burned the center of his chest. 

Cold spread from where her nails dug in. “ _How did you do that?_ ” she snarled, vicious.

Stiles mouthed soundlessly. He’d seen her every plan. She’d already sent someone to sabotage the settlement in the south from the inside, until she had the power to finish them herself. His power felt weak, like it was draining.

Peter snarled suddenly and appeared as his teeth latched into her shoulder from behind. 

She screamed and flung him off, but blood was already spreading over her white tunic like a blight, dripping down her arm while Stiles gasped. She grabbed his forearm, her blood slick against his skin; it began to burn and he yelped, finally remembering himself and blasting her off her feet.

The mark remained, a livid red handprint just below his wrist, throbbing like a burn.

She got to her feet, charred and bleeding, and looked at Peter, then Stiles. A whirl of ice enveloped her, and then she was gone.

Stiles looked down at the burn—the _brand_ —on his arm, breathing hard.

Peter nudged his shoulder. 

He swallowed and waved an arm at John, Laura, and Derek; he went weak with relief when the spell snapped, his magic still as strong as ever, singing inside after the hit they managed to land on her.

“Oh my god,” Laura gasped. “Oh my-”

“Panic later,” Stiles spat, looking at the edges of the valley. “We have to go!”

They grabbed their bags and just managed to scramble out of the valley before the storm converged on it with an unholy roar.


	21. Chapter 21

The storm raged around them, but Stiles had energy to spare and they needed to get away _fast_ , before that witch regrouped and caught them again. He used fire to blaze a path through the snow; he felt a warning shudder of exhaustion, but he wasn’t tapped out yet and they needed to move quickly.

None of them said a word as they fled, though Stiles felt them looking at him, perhaps wondering why he hadn’t done that before. His knees shook, but the more distance between her and them, the better. 

“Here!” Laura shouted suddenly. She kicked at a pile of snow, revealing a hole in dark stone, tunneling down at an angle. 

Stiles elbowed her aside and melted the snow; his knees gave out and he slumped against the wall.

Derek caught him under the arm and helped him down the slope into the cave.

Stiles shook him off with a muttered, “Thanks.” He yanked his jacket off his left arm to stare at the brand.

“Okay,” Laura said once they were all crammed in the cave, even Peter, who was still shifted. “Peter, change back and get dressed so we’ll have more room. We have to figure out where to go, oh god, I’m so sorry.”

Stiles prodded the mark, but he couldn’t make it go away. He was fairly certain she was trying to track him with it, but he understood the magic to some extent, he was inside her head, and he could try to throw her off. He sent magic into it, throwing the path in the opposite direction, hoping she would follow it. He closed his hand over the mark, trying to sear it off, but it remained. 

“Stiles,” Laura said sharply. “Are you okay?”

He’d vaguely heard her talking, but hadn’t really been listening.

“What happened?”

He shook his head, covering the mark. “She can get inside our heads, in everyone’s. That was—that’s her type of magic.” He started to pace, noting absently that Peter must have shifted back as he pulled on his jacket again. 

“Type of magic?” Laura echoed.

Stiles ran a hand through his hair. She could be tracking them _at this moment._ Tracking _him_. “Most witches are intuitively good at certain types of magic,” he explained absently. “They can learn the other types, but it’s easier to learn stuff that complements the one that came first. The more different the types are, the harder it is. I’m good at protective magic because my first one, the one that came to me instinctively, is battle magic. She’s—she’s got psychic magic, like mind reading, seeing the future, finding others.” He scrubbed a hand over the brand, hidden by his jacket sleeve. “Controlling them, too, I guess. She’ll lure groups in, absorb their power, and kill all but one of them. That one…” He sighed and stopped pacing. “She’d send that one out to talk about how great it is up here, like a lure.” He looked at them.

Laura still looked confused while Derek just looked concerned. 

John sighed, rubbing his eyes and leaning against the wall furthest from the opening.

“She’s been doing it for years,” he finished quietly.

The tunnel they’d used to get in rumbled, then collapsed with a ground-shaking crash. “Yes,” the witch’s voice slid through the rubble, “well, we witches know what we have to do to survive, don’t we, Stiles?” She stepped over a pile of rocks and smiled, tipping her head. Her wounds were gone, but her clothes were still stained and burned, her cheek smudged with blood.

Laura snarled.

“Oh, don’t be so shocked.” She winked at Stiles. “You aren’t the only one who got a peek and I know how to look for the important stuff.” She flicked her fingers, slamming Laura and Peter back against the wall near Derek.

Stiles flung a shield around them, holding a hand out behind him to reinforce it; it stretched out around all of the Hales, but John was stepping just out of reach, almost like he was doing it on purpose. “Shut up.” 

“Have you told your friends that you’re useless to them?” she taunted.

He flinched, resisting the urge to turn around.

“Can’t even grow a flower, let alone crops to keep you all fed. What good are you?”

His face flushed hot, but he didn’t turn to them. He yanked his fist toward his chest, knocking her off her feet, then thrust it back out, slamming her into the rocks.

She stomped her foot and ice slicked over the ground, sending his feet out from under him.

He wheezed and pressed his palm to the ice, melting it instantly, then jerked away when an icicle slammed into the rock next to him. He looked up in time to get kicked under the chin, sprawling on his back. Blood pooled in his mouth from his bitten tongue.

She loomed over him, lifting her hands like an overzealous conductor. “You’re done.” She brought her hands down.

Stiles kicked out at the last second, slamming a knock back spell into her chest. He rolled to his feet, ignoring the thumps of Peter, Derek, and Laura against the shield he’d trapped them in. He spat blood.

She glared, twisting her lips. “Pathetic.” She shot ice at him.

He prepared to deflect, holding his breath for the right angle… 

A gunshot cracked through the cave, half-deafening all of them.

She jerked back, falling against the wall and clutching her right shoulder. She looked at the wound, then John, jaw hanging open. “You _shot_ me!”

John adjusted his stance. “Yep.”

She clenched her hand on the wound, filling the air with the stench of burning flesh, and sagged, her face paling so much she looked like a wax figure. “You—you-” She slashed her free hand through the air, conjuring a flurry of ice.

Stiles flinched as the shards slashed at him. The cuts from earlier and these new ones meant he was covered in tiny scratches, leaving his face smeared with blood. He flicked his wrist and saw she’d disappeared again, teleporting somehow. He swallowed and cast his senses, too afraid to turn around. 

Everyone, even Peter, felt shocked, betrayed…hurt.

Stiles said, “I—I have to go. We have to split up.” He turned and dropped the shield, flinching as he finally looked at their faces. He couldn’t make himself lie to them, couldn’t try to cover his ass now that the witch was gone; it was clear they’d believed her, and he had no defense because she was telling the truth. 

Laura shook her head, eyes glistening. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair standing in a mess. “Why?” she choked, and she wasn’t questioning his announcement. 

Stiles felt his own eyes burn in response. “We—we needed help,” he stuttered, then made himself stop. “It doesn’t matter. We’re splitting up.”

“No.” Laura wiped tears from her face. “No, we should stay together, even though you lied.”

“Dad,” Stiles said softly.

John shot him a hard, unreadable look before grabbing their bags. He tossed Stiles’s to him and followed him as he scrambled for the entrance. 

Derek shoved past John and caught Stiles’s arm before he’d made it past the rubble. “What are you doing? Just _stop._ We don’t have to split up.” He was clearly furious, looming over Stiles with his jaw clenched tight. “We’ll all be safer together, and we can-”

“Stop.” Stiles shook his head. “Why do you care?” he snapped. “You just wanted me around to make a fucking garden, now you know that isn’t happening.”

Derek fell back a step, mouth open in an expression of hurt before his face hardened. “Well, you only stuck around us for protection.”

Stiles fought the sting of tears. “Right,” he managed. “So we all used each other, and it’s over now.” He stepped around Derek, careful not to bump into him, and waited for John to catch up a few steps away. “You should-”

“If you say _stay,_ I’ll kick your ass,” John growled. “Just don’t.”

They only made it a few yards before Stiles realized they were being followed. His heart lurched until he realized it was Peter, then dropped as he imagined Laura and Derek huddled in that dark, cold cave, betrayed by him and then abandoned by Peter. 

“Go back.”

Peter shook his head, stopping next to John.

Stiles glared at him. “Go back to them. They need you.”

He scoffed and shook his head, like that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. 

Stiles glowered. “They do, they need you, especially now. Peter,” Stiles snapped. “Go.”

Peter planted his feet.

Stiles clenched his jaw. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

He relaxed slightly, face softening, and Stiles thrust a hand out, flinging him back toward the cave. 

Stiles brought his hands together, dragging snow in to conceal their path, then glanced over at John.

His expression was still hard to read. “Get moving,” he murmured, and started walking.

Stiles squared his shoulders, did a warming spell on both of them, and got moving.


	22. Chapter 22

**Epilogue**

By morning, they were both exhausted, barely putting one foot in front of the other as they trudged through the thigh-deep snow. Stiles had spent all of his energy keeping them from the jaws of hypothermia and scattering the tracking magic on his arm.

It was stronger than normal here, in her element, a place of her own that she’d been drawing power from. Stiles was sure once they were further away, it’d be easier to throw her off, but for now, it was taking everything out of him.

“We need to stop,” John said at last, catching Stiles’s arm. “We can’t go much longer, you’re about to collapse and I’m dead on my feet here.”

Stiles looked over his shoulder, sure he would see her in hot pursuit. He sighed. “Alright, we’ll find somewhere to stop.”

John nodded, reaching up to brush snow off Stiles’s head.

Stiles felt around them, wincing as he felt an answering echo, their leftover energy bouncing back to him. “Come on,” he mumbled. “We can go this way.”

It took another half hour, but Stiles eventually found it, the cave they’d all stayed in before that Peter had found. He felt John looking at him but didn’t speak, focusing on closing them in and scattering the tracking magic again. He squeezed his arm, sending a jolt of magic through the brand in another attempt to remove it, but it didn’t budge. He glanced at the remains of their fire from before and clenched his fists, swallowing hard to keep from reacting. He’d had to leave them.

That witch had marked him. She could track him and he couldn’t protect them and keep her from following him. If she was chasing him, she would leave the Hales alone. Now he just had to find somewhere safe for John to get him out of the line of fire. 

“Okay,” John said, jarring Stiles from his thoughts. “You want to tell me what that was about?” He’d obviously been waiting for a calm moment to cut loose, showing restraint that Stiles had never had.

He swallowed and faced him. “I knew once they found out I couldn’t do garden magic, it would only-”

“Cut the bullshit,” he snapped. “Laura tried to get us to stay anyway, even after she found out.”

His eyes stung and he had to look away, struggling for words.

“You should’ve come clean a while ago. Why did you keep it a secret anyway?” he demanded, like he’d been sitting on this for a long time. Maybe he had.

“I—we needed help, I couldn’t keep us safe on my own.” That was the reason from the start, the reason he never came clean or admitted the truth about his magic. He gnawed at his lip, squeezing his eyes shut as the feeling of their betrayal rushed back to him.

John was frowning at him when he opened his eyes. “Why did you want to split from the Hales, really?”

Stiles took a shuddering breath. Freaking out and drowning in regret and guilt wasn’t going to do them any good, and John would have to know. He shrugged his jacket off and pulled his sleeve up, thrusting his arm out. “She’s using this to track me and I can’t remove it.” He let John see it for a moment, then continued, “With distance and anti-tracking magic, maybe some spells, I can hide from her, but I can’t risk them getting caught in the crossfire. She’s after _witches._ I—I saw her plans, Dad, and they’re awful.” He covered his eyes with his palm, trying to press the feeling of her cold, methodical cruelty from his brain.

“How so?” 

“She wants to be the _only_ witch left so she’s the only person who can grow produce and keep livestock. She’s got an elaborate plan to make sure that happens.”

“She’d control the food,” John said softly. “Control who eats and who starves.”

“Right.” Stiles sagged, relieved he understood. “And since I’m a target and branded so she can track me, you _all_ need to be away from me.” 

John shook his head. “No.” He met Stiles’s gaze, his face hard and flushed, eyes like ice chips. “No, you can ditch the Hales even though they treated us like family, but you aren’t leaving me behind. We’ll help each other. That’s what we do.”

Stiles held his hands out. “Dad, please. Until I figure out how to remove this mark, I’m not safe to be around.”

“Tough shit,” he snapped. He was silent, obviously fuming, for several seconds, before blurting, “I cannot _believe_ you thought you were going to leave me behind.”

“Dad-”

“Where are we going next?” His expression allowed for no arguments; Stiles hadn’t seen him this mad since he was a teenager.

He suddenly felt like one again. “Well. Um.”

“You said she has a plan,” he bit out. “What’s her next move? Maybe we can stop her.”

He shuddered. “She knew of a witch settlement somewhere in the south. That’s how she’s making sure she’ll be the most powerful—by making sure people don’t band together. Scattered, she can play the part of savior, but only after she’s taken down all other witches and settlements, so she’s the only one everyone left can turn to.” He rubbed his forehead. “She had a lot of plans, every step of it was mapped out, and that settlement…apparently it’s a threat to her. She wants to destroy it.”

John nodded, his face still set. “Then we need to go there and warn them what’s coming.”

Stiles opened his mouth to protest—after all, that was exactly where the witch was going, which meant they should be going in the _other_ direction—and hesitated. If the witch was correct, and this settlement was full of witches, or run by at least one witch more powerful than Stiles… “Maybe they can help me get this off, too,” he offered weakly.

“Fine.” He dropped his bag and started digging through it with his back to him.

Well, Stiles thought, Stilinskis were nothing if not stubborn. He got his own blanket out to curl up in, starting a fire in the remains of the first one and trying to forget the look on Derek’s face. It was going to be a long journey south.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said at the beginning, they will get a happy ending. They just have to earn it first. The second one will start going up around mid August I believe, to give me time to finish things. Hope you liked it, lmk! <3 I love sharing with you guys.


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